Railways batsmen gave a good account of themselves by resisting fancied Mumbai bowlers on their home turf on the day three wicket of their opening Group A Ranji Trophy at Wankhede stadium here on Sunday. Zaheer Khan (1/41) and co. toiled hard as Railways reached 380/8 in 118 overs at stumps in response to Mumbai’s first innings score of 570. They however, are still trailing by 190 runs and require 41 runs more to avoid the follow-on.
Nitin Bhille (73), skipper Sanjay Bangar (67), Mahesh Rawat (68), Ashish Yadav (47) and Murali Kartik (41) made healthy contributions to launch a strong fightback from Railways.
Bangar and Bhille carried from where they had left on Saturday before Abhishek Nayar broke the third wicket 110-run partnership in his fourth over after Bangar hit straight into the hands of Iqbal Abdulla at extra cover. Bangar had taken the attack on Ramesh Powar on Saturday and he continued to dominate the bowler as the burly offie’s first eight overs (in two spells) went for 61 runs.
Debutant Parag Madkaikar (11) was Powar’s (1/129) only victim. Zaheer was brought in from the pavilion end for his second spell of the day immediately after the fall of a wicket. He found edge of Bhille’s bat but the ball fell well short of Rohit Sharma at first slip as Railways went to lunch at 184/4.
Kaustubh Pawar took his third catch at slips off Ait Agarkar and fourth overall after he caught Bhille. Kaustubh dropped four catches as well in the innings.
Zaheer took the new ball and finally struck in the third over by finding an outer edge of Rawat and wicketkeeper Aditya Tare dived to his right to complete the catch.Yadav and Kartik were involved in a 77-run partnership for the seventh wicket before both were caught by Sachin Tendulkar off Iqbal Abdulla.