Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 24: Jammu and Kashmir bowlers once again showed discipline by reading the surface well and hitting good areas, to restrict formidable Karnataka to 268/8 in 90 overs at stumps on Day-1 of the Ranji Trophy Elite Group-C match at IIT Chemplast, Chennai today.
Earlier, winning the toss and batting first, Karnataka lost opener Devdutt Padikkal early in the innings at his individual score of 8 runs and the team’s total of 10 runs in 2 overs. Padikkal was caught by Abdul Samad after the bowling of left-arm seam bowler, Mujtaba Yousuf.
Then another opening batsman Samarth R was joined by Karun Nair in the middle and the pair took the score to 108 runs in 29.4 overs, thus making a partnership of 98 runs, before right-arm leg-spinner Abdul Samad got rid of Samarth R at his individual score of 45 runs off 74 balls studded with 5 delectable boundaries. Karun Nair was in awe-inspiring touch and alongwith Siddharth KV took the score to 164/3 in 49.3 overs, before pace sensation Umran Malik struck twice to remove Siddharth for 16 and skipper Manish Pandey for 1 to make it 166/4 in 51.2 overs.
Then medium pacer Auqib Nabi dismissed BR Sharath, before off-spinner Parvez Rasool struck twice, removing Shreyas Gopal and Gowtham K cheaply to make it 209/7 in 68.5 overs. However, Karun Nair, who is a class act, when on song, continued his brilliance and alongwith number-9 Ronit More added valuable 59 runs, taking the score to 268, before left-arm medium pacer Yousuf Mujtaba castled More at his individual score of 23 runs on last ball of the day.
Karun Nair remained unbeaten on 152 runs off 267 balls, studded with 21 fours and one six. He was there for the whole day except first two overs.
For J&K, Parvez Rasool, Mujtaba Yousuf and Umran Malik shared 2 wickets each by conceding 51, 44 and 35 runs in 25, 15 and 12 overs respectively, while Auqib Nabi and Abdul Samad claimed one wicket each.
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