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Fixture & Results
Wakhare bags five as spinners dominate day one
11th January 2020
Spinners dominated on the first day as Vidarbha spin duo Akshay Wakhare and Aditya Sarvate combined up to bag 9 wickets against Bengal in a Ranji Trophy encounter in Nagpur today.
Electing to bat first experienced Manoj Tiwary made a patient 80-ball 48 to help Bengal make 170 runs in the first innings while Bengal spinners restricted the hosts to 89/3 at the end of the play.
Bengal skipper Abhimanyu Easwaran said: "There is help for the spinners. If you bowl in the right areas it will spin. Ritwik was having some trouble with his left knee while running between the wickets. I believe we can restrict them below our first innings total. If we can take early wickets we are always in the game. It will be hard for their batters out there as well because of the spinning and our fast bowlers know where to bowl."
"Which team is going to take the first innings lead will be clear in the first one hour tomorrow. I think this match is gonna go for outright and how we perform as a batting unit, how we bowl and field in the second innings will decide our fate. We have good batsmen. We are not being able to get big runs apart from Raman who has already scored two tons. It's never easy to settle on such track but I think we could've capitalized on this wicket from day one," he added.
Bengal got off to a shaky start losing Abhishek Raman (6), skipper Easwaran (18) and Sreevats Goswami (8) for 48 runs.
Manoj and Ritwik Roy Chowdhury (27) steadied the ship after that before the latter one went back to pavilion for having some trip with the left knee.
From 122-4 Bengal lost rest 6 wickets for 48 runs as Wakhare bagged a five-wicket haul while Sarvate took 4 for 53.
The visitors' spinners Shahbaz Ahamad, Arnab Nandi and Shreyan Chakraborty bagged 1 wickets apiece while Vidarbha batter F Fazal scored a half-century.
Anustup Majumdar came into the team in place for Ayan Bhattacharya while Shreyan made his debut today.
CAB MEDIA DESK
Rio Dutta
