Press Trust of India
New Delhi, Jan 15: Delhi’s clinical performance in the season continued as they made a mockery of a below-par Orissa, snaring as many as 19 wickets on a single day, to win by an innings and 150 runs in a Group B match of the Ranji Trophy cricket tournament here Thursday.
Having scored 353 in their first essay, Delhi’s spin troika of Manan Sharma, Shivam Sharma and Varun Sood dominated the proceedings sharing 14 of the 20 wickets among them with Orissa scoring 118 and 85 in their two innings.
Starting the day at 25 for one, none of the Orissa batsmen showed any guts to fight it out on a pitch where batting was certainly difficult but not impossible. Left-arm spinner Manan, with match-haul of 8/33 including a 6/24 in the second innings, put it aptly.
“It was difficult to gauge which way the bowl would turn and the amount of turn. So rather than trying to give it a tweak, we tried to bowl wicket to wicket and we knew that something would happen. You can’t call it was a difficult track as our team scored 353 on the same track,” Manan, son of former India player and Delhi stalwart Ajay Sharma said.
Delhi now play three away games but with 30 points in their kitty after five matches, they are almost through to the quarterfinals for the first time after the 2009-10 season.
Orissa neither had the quality nor the tactical acumen to battle it out or try and eke out a point from the game. While none reached an individual score of 30 in the first innings, the worst part was the technique that Orissa players showed. Either they were way too attacking, playing some rash shots or way too defensive with so many close-in fielders in the cordon.
Brief Scores: Delhi 353; Orissa 118 (Navdeep Saini 3/22, Varun Sood 3/16) & (FO) 85 (Manan Sharma 6/24). Delhi won by an innings and 150 runs.
Other Group B matches
(At Ahmedabad): Gujarat 513 for 8 decl; Punjab 219 for 4 (Jiwanjot Singh 76, Uday Kaul 77). Match to continue.
(At Pune): Rajasthan 270 and 106 (Shrikant Mumndhe 6/38) lost to Maharashtra 274 and 105 for 1 (Swapnil Guagale 56 n o) by nine wickets.
(At Nagpur): Vidarbha 583 for 9 decl; Saurashtra 251 for 5 (Cheteshwar Pujara 114). Match to continue.
