New Delhi, Nov. 1: Opener Arindam Das responded to his skipper Manoj Tiwary’s decision to bat first with an unbeaten 150 as Bengal were comfortably placed at 313 for two against Delhi in Group A Super League match of the Ranji Trophy at the Feroz Shah Kotla here on Monday.
Giving Arindam company was captain Tiwary who looked in fine nick, scoring an unbeaten 47 (80 balls, 4x6) and adding 110 runs for the unbroken third-wicket partnership.
Delhi captain Mithun Manhas at the toss said that it was a good toss to lose as he wanted to bowl first having three frontline seamers in Pradeep Sangwan, Parwinder Awana and Sumit Narwal apart from back-up option in Rajat Bhatia.
However the Kotla track turned out to be a lifeless one offering very little help to the bowlers as Arindam showed lot of application and completed his seventh century in first-class cricket. The Delhi seamers bend their back throughout the day without any result on a track where the ball did not rise above the knee for the better part of the day with odd deliveries turning into shooters.
It was captain Manhas’ 16 overs of off-break that gave Delhi the two wickets of the day. Arindam, who batted for all of 387 minutes hit 19 boundaries during his 238-ball knock.
He was rarely troubled by the Delhi bowlers during the day. Although he did not play a single risky shot but that also did not deter him and fellow opener Sreevats Goswami (68, 124 balls, 10x4, 1x6) to score freely as they added 115 runs in the opening session. With the bowlers hardly getting any movement the only thing that Bengal batsmen needed to be careful was the low bounce.
Sreevats was the dominant partner during the opening stand as hit some delightful shots square of the wicket. There were few shots past the third man region but all were intended ones and with absolutely no carry in the strip.
Scores
* Bengal 313/2 in 88 overs (Arindam Das batting 150, Manhas 2/47) vs Delhi.
* Mumbai 340/7 in 90 overs (Wasim Jaffer 138, Rohit Sharma 93; Ravindra Jadeja 3/100) vs Saurashtra.
* Assam 184 in 72.2 overs (Aziz 36, Laxmipathy Balaji 4/53) vs Tamil Nadu 21/0.
* Punjab 279/6 (Karan Goel batting 56, Yuvraj Singh 52, Praveen Kumar 3/68) vs Uttar Pradesh.
* Gujarat 234/4 in 90 overs (Niraj Patel 46, Bhavik Thaker batting 54, Bangar 1/32) vs Railways.