The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Cautious Tamil Nadu crawls to 197 for four

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2004

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Sport - Cricket

Cautious Tamil Nadu crawls to 197 for four

By Our Special Correspondent

LUCKNOW, NOV. 16. Tamil Nadu gained less than expected after opting to bat and let Uttar Pradesh breath easy at the end of the first day's play of the Ranji Trophy Elite group match at the K. D. Singh `Babu' Stadium here on Tuesday.

On a pitch where the odd ball tended to keep low, Tamil Nadu treaded cautiously to reach 197 for four. If the visiting side failed to dominate the none-too-intimidating bowling it was because three of its batsmen failed come up with a big scores even after spending a fair amount of time in the middle.

Among the UP bowlers, left-arm medium pacer Rudra Pratap Singh struck three times in four spells to make sure that Tamil Nadu did not get too far away.

The lack of bounce in the pitch made the batsmen realise the importance of playing straight. All credit to the Tamil Nadu frontline batsmen who applied themselves well and did not attempt to play across the line. As much as possible, they made a conscious effort to come on to the front-foot to tackle the slow and low bounce.

The early fall of S. Suresh, who came up the batting order, as a replacement for S. Ramesh, was surely a huge source of joy for the home camp. The lanky right-hander, without adequate movement of the feet, hanged his bat out to a rising delivery from R. P. Singh and wicketkeeper Mohammad Amir Khan took the resultant snick.

But once stand-in skipper S. Sriram joined S. Vidyuth, UP soon accepted the fact that it had to pay the dues for losing the toss.

Vidyuth lucky

Vidyuth, fresh from scoring a century last week against Hyderabad, helped himself to a half-century before his dismissal ended the day's best stand of 92 runs. Vidyuth, however, was lucky to escape a stumping chance off left-arm spinner Praveen Gupta. The young left-hander, who hit five boundaries, ran out of luck and was bowled after getting a `shooter' from R. P. Singh. During Vidyuth's 143-ball stay, the flicked boundary off Ashish Winston Zaidi stood out.

Sriram and S. Badrinath were the other two batsmen who promised big knocks but fell after spending just under 150 minutes. Sriram conducted himself like a man in form. Though the left-hander hit just one boundary, off part-time off-spinner Suresh Raina, he looked poised to come up with another huge contribution for his team. He was never in any discomfort and made batting look easy. But Zaidi trapped him leg-before to reduce Tamil Nadu to 120 for three.

The scores:

Tamil Nadu — 1st innings: S. Vidyuth b R. P. Singh 52, S. Suresh c Mohammad Amir Khan b R. P. Singh 7, S. Sriram lbw b Zaidi 36, S. Badrinath c Khan b R. P. Singh 37, S. Sharath (batting) 39, K. Vasudeva Rao (batting) 12, Extras (b-6, lb-3, w-5) 14, Total (for four wickets in 90 overs) 197.

Fall of wickets: 1-16, 2-108, 3-120, 4-181.

Uttar Pradesh bowling: A. W. Zaidi 21-8-38-1, R. P. Singh 22-6-54-3, Suresh Raina 12-3-28-0, Praveen Gupta 21-4-44-0, Shivakant Shukla 4-0-10-0, Rahat Elahi 9-4-14-0, Jyoti Yadav 1-1-0-0.

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