Services thrash Assam by 10 wickets in Ranji Trophy group C match

Our Sports Reporter

GUWAHATI: Services thrashed Assam by 10 wickets in the elite group ‘C’ Ranji Trophy tie in Delhi today. Chasing 72 runs to win, after Assam bowled out 256 runs in the second innings, Services reached the target without losing a single wicket.

It was the third defeat for Assam in the season and they are almost out from the competition. Assam, placed at the sixth place in the points table, collected 14 points from their six outings.

Visitors started their second innings from overnight score 83-3 and bat well in the morning session. Sarupam Purkayastha, who made comeback in the first class cricket with this game, looked good touch and scored bulk of the runs that Assam scored today. Assam lost overnight not out batsman Sibsankar (4) very early of the day which brought in Sarupam Purkayastha. Sarupam, paired with another overnight not out batsmen Gokul Sarma, put good resistance to Services. The duo on the fifth wickets added 78 runs which gave little hope to the visitors to avoid the defeat.

But Services returned into the game when Gokul got out scoring another half-century of the season. The batsman today scored 56 runs and there are 8 hits to the fence.

Sarupam at the other end tried his best to consolidate the innings but didn’t get too much support before he got out on 74. The batsman faced 144 balls and hits eight boundaries. At lunch, Assam were 193-5 but lost the remaining five wickets adding 63 runs.

Dinesh Gurdev Pathania bagged 5-56.

Services needed 18.1 overs to chase the target. Two openers NK Singh and Nakul Verma remained not out on 31 and 39 runs respectively when Services hit the winning run.

In the next Game Assam will face Goa in Guwahati from December 22.

Also read: Ranji Trophy: Assam struggling to avoid defeat against Services