Assam towards huge victory over Haryana

Our Sports Reporter

GUWAHATI: Rode on terrific pace bowling, led by Arup Das, Assam reached close to register 2nd victory of the season in the Ranji trophy at the ACA stadium, Barsapara here today. Hosts just needed three wickets on day III tomorrow to win the tie while opponent Haryana required another 135 runs to avoid innings defeat.

Chasing Assam 1st innings total 310, Haryana today bowled out paltry 97 runs in the first innings and later after following on the side took their second innings score 78-8 at stumps on second day. Assam altogether collected 17 wickets on the second day and all were picked up by the pacers of the team.

There were two good individuals’ performances from Assam in the match. One came from Arup Das and another one from middle order batsman Gokul Sharma who missed century for just four runs this morning. However Arup should get credit little more than Gokul as the bowler single handedly torn Haryana in both the innings. He finished 5-52 in the first innings and collected another 4-23 in the second.

Hayana were never in the game when they started their batting today. The side were once struggling 22-5 in the first innings and they failed to recover from this point. Arup was bang on target and he got good support from Ranjit Mali, who finished with 3-25, at the early stage of the innings. Later young pacer Mukhtar Hussain joined the party and he too picked up two wickets giving away only 20 runs during his 5.2 overs spell.

There was no change in Haryana’s second innings as Assam pacers once again made complete domination over their batsmen. This time also Arup ((4-23) was most successful while Ranjeet Mali (2-13) and Mukhtar Hussain (1-31) shared the remaining three wickets. The match could be over for Haryana today if Chaitanya Bishnoi, the highest scorer in the second innings, didn’t get a life on the bowling of Mukhtar Hussain as the delivery was not valid because of over stepping.

Chaitanya Bishnoi (39no) and Poonish Mehta (17) were at the crease when the day’s play came to an end. The duo added 38 runs on the eighth wickets. In the first innings Jayant Yadav (30) was the top scorer for Haryana. Harshel Patel (25) and Himangshu Rana (21) were the other major contributors.

Earlier Gokul Sarma played a responsible knock but missed another century in the season. The batsman, who remained not out on 51 yesterday, took his score to 96 before got out. It was the second occasions when he got out nervous nineties in the season. First one occurred against Jharkhand during the first game.

However his patience knock put Assam in a very commendable position in the game. Gokul was on the wicket for nearly 5 hours and faced 229 balls to score 96 with the help of 14 boundaries. He also made two good partnerships with two lower order batsmen- Arup Das (28) and Mukhtar Hussain (33). On the seventh wicket Gokul and Arup added 49 runs and later on the ninth wicket Gokul-Mukhtar scored another 36 runs. Poonish Mehta (3-51) and Jayant Yadav (3-63) shared six wickets between them.

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