Chennai, Oct 23:
Jharkhand batsman Ishank Jaggi scored a gutsy century to bail his team out of a precarious situation as East Zone finished their first innings at a respectable 232 against Central Zone on the third day of Duleep Trophy final.
At stumps, Central were 12 for no loss after two overs when umpires stopped proceedings due to bad light.
While Jaggi pulled his team out of the troubled waters with a quality knock of 100 not out, Central off-spinner Jalaj Saxena was rewarded for his beautiful bowling as he ended with a five-wicket haul.
Jaggi’s 100 came off 251 balls with the help of 12 boundaries. It was his sixth first-class hundred while Jalaj’s 5/62 was his second five-for in longer version. The right-hand batsman got a reprieve when Bhuvneshwar Kumar dropped a sitter at mid-off with Murali Kartik being the unlucky bowler.
Starting the day at 64 for three, the Jharkhand lad in company of nightwatchman Iresh Saxena saw of the first hour without much difficult and also scored a few runs in the process.
While India discard Praveen Kumar kept things tight, he never looked like getting a wicket as Jaggi-Iresh duo added 49 runs for the fourth wicket before East faced another slump.
Jalaj bowled a classical off-break that saw Iresh (16) being bowled through the gate. Last match’s centurion Saurabh Tiwary (0) pushed hard at an armer from Kartik only to edge it to Mahesh Rawat behind stumps.
Biplab Samantray (0) was out as he also tried to push hard at a loopy off-break bowled by Jalaj onky to be caught by Kartik stationed at first slip.
From 113 for three, East were again down in the dumps at 117 for six when Shiv Prakash Gautam (34, 5×4) joined his statemate Jaggi. The duo carried a repair job as they played confidently against Jalaj and Kartik adding 57 runs in the process. (PTI)
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