The Hindu : Sport / Cricket : Kaarthick lets his bat do the talking

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Tuesday, Dec 27, 2005

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Kaarthick lets his bat do the talking

Special Correspondent

LONE RANGER: Dinesh Kaarthick was at his delightful best even as wickets kept tumbling at the other end in the Tamil Nadu-Mumbai Ranji Trophy encounter in Mumbai. — Photo: Vivek Bendre

Mumbai: On a day when Mumbai dominated the proceedings, Tamil Nadu wicketkeeper Dinesh Kaarthick's defiant unbeaten 98 prevented its innings from total collapse on the second day of its Ranji Trophy Elite Group `A' league at the Wankhede stadium here on Monday. After making 430, the host reduced Tamil Nadu to 208 for eight at close.

While the rest of his colleagues were reluctant to use their feet against the spinners, Kaarthick saw no danger in doing so and succeeded against off-spinner Ramesh Powar, who had caused a lot of damage on either side of lunch, as well as left-arm spinner Nilesh Kulkarni.

Tough task

Going out to bat at the fall of the fifth wicket at 85, Kaarthick handled the spinners with felicity to hit 15 fours and one six in his unbeaten 98 (136m, 111b). He will resume the battle on Tuesday in the company of G. Vignesh as Tamil Nadu faces an uphill task.

After being ignored by the selectors who opted for Parthiv Patel for the tour of Pakistan, Kaarthick made his bat talk with thundering shots that echoed throughout the near-empty stadium. That he was averaging lower than eight in his four previous outings was just a poor run and not a true reflection of his batting ability.

Study in contrast

His batting display was in stark contrast to the methods adopted by S. Sriram and S. Sharath. Tamil Nadu's slide began when Hemant Kumar was bowled by Avishkar Salvi. Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan was out to a rash shot while S. Sriram's attacking stroke resulted in the leading edge travelling to cover where Kulkarni held a spectacular two-handed catch.

Debutant Abhishek Nair then won an appeal from umpire T.K. Handu that left S. Badrinath shocked. Hemang Badani fell to a delivery from Powar that jumped.

While wickets tumbled at one end, Kaarthick seized the opportunity with both hands. His partnership with R. Naresh fetched 59 for the seventh wicket, while his undefeated association with G. Vignesh for the ninth has yielded 41. Tamil Nadu needs 72 more to avoid the follow-on.

The scores: Mumbai — 1st innings: S. Kukreja lbw b Vignesh 4, V. Samant c Kaarthick b Kumaran 13, W. Jaffer c Badrinath b Vidyut 162, A. Muzumdar c Kaarthick b Vignesh 39, V. Indulkar c Kaarthick b Kumaran 36, N. Shetty c Badrinath b Kapoor 77, R. Powar c Sriram b Vignesh 8, A. Nair b Naresh 21, N. Kulkarni c Kaarthick b Naresh 16, S. Hazare (not out) 2, A. Salvi st. Kaarthick b Vidyut 1; Extras (lb-12, nb-33, w-6) 51; Total (in 109.2 overs) 430.

Fall of wickets: 1-12, 2-27, 3-127, 4-248, 5-311, 6-329, 7-400, 8-424, 9-429.

Tamil Nadu bowling: Kumaran 26-4-110-2, Vignesh 24-4-107-3, Naresh 22-4-59-2, Kapoor 21-1-69-1, Vidyut 4.2-0-25-2, Sriram 10-1-37-0, Badrinath 2-0-11-0.

Tamil Nadu — 1st innings: S. Vidyut c Jaffer b Powar 8, Hemant Kumar b Salvi 0, S. Sriram c Kulkarni b Powar 14, S. Badrinath c Samant b Nair 21, H. Badani c Jaffer b Powar 28, S. Sharath b Nair 5, D. Kaarthick (batting) 98, R. Naresh c Samant b Salvi 10, A. Kapoor c Samant b Hazare 2, G. Vignesh (batting) 2; Extras (b-4, lb-3, nb-12, w-1) 20; Total (for eight wkts. in 68 overs) 208.

Fall of wickets: 1-1, 2-23, 3-27, 4-61, 5-85, 6-91, 7-142, 8-167.

Mumbai bowling: Salvi 15-5-25-2, Hazare 9-2-26-1, Powar 26-5-84-3, Nair 10-0-38-2, Kulkarni 8-3-28-0.

Other scores: Elite group:

At Delhi: Railways 77 and 180 (J.P. Yadav 90, A. Sharma five for 39) lost to Delhi 131 (Murali Kartik eight for 40) and 127 for three (Gautam Gambhir 43).

At Hyderabad: Services 196 vs. Hyderabad 278 for six (D.S. Manohar 54, Anirudh Singh 95, D. Vinay Kumar 49 batting).

At Bangalore: Karnataka 260 (R. Uthappa 96, B. Rowland 46) vs. Maharashtra 108 (Vinay Kumar five for 22) and 78 for no loss (S.A. Satbhai 53 batting).

At Surat: Bengal 405 for seven (Arindam Das 64, A. Jhunjhunwala 72, Deep Dasgupta 124 batting, Shibsagar Singh 46 batting) vs. Gujarat.

At Vadodara: Punjab 130 and 69 for five (Zaheer Khan five for 41) vs. Baroda 262 (C. Williams 50, J. Martin 80, Gagandeep Singh five for 84).

At Anantpur: Haryana 206 (Siddharth Verma 45, Sachin Rana 52, Pardeep Sahu 41, K.S. Sahabuddin four for 43) vs. Andhra 192 for four (M.S.K. Prasad 79, Venugopala Rao 70).

Plate group:

At Rajkot: Saurashtra 439 (J.N. Shah 90, Cheteshwar Pujara 145, S.H. Kotak 60, B. Songavkar 80 not out, A. Aware four for 111) vs. Goa 50 for three.

At Udaipur: Assam 240 (Arunkumar 123, S.V. Saravanan 41, M. Aslam four for 35) vs. Rajasthan 172 for four (N.G. Gehlot 42 batting)

At Palakkad: Kerala 399 (S. Suresh 121, S. Ramesh 60, Sunil Oasis 53, F.M. Robert 59, Sunny Gupta four for 128) vs. Jharkhand 189 (M.V. Joglekar 67) and 13 for one.

At Agartala: Vidarbha 156 and 184 for five (A.V. Deshpande 57, Alind Naidu 50) vs. Tripura 112 (T.K. Chanda 41).

At Indore: Jammu and Kashmir 257 for five (A. Butt 89,Y. Golwalkar 76, D. Mahajan 42).

At Cuttack: Himachal Pradesh 168 (M. Gupta 62, R. Nayar 50 not out, Sourav Sehgal seven for 39). vs. Orissa 18 for no loss.

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