Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Dec 23: J&K’s tall and lanky speedster Ramdayal Punia wrecked havoc in the rival camp by scalping six top and middle-order batsmen to restrict Himachal Pradesh to 189 runs in the first innings of the 4-day Ranji trophy Group-C match at GGM Science College Hostel Ground, here today.
Himachal Pradesh, thus gained a vital lead of 16 runs as J&K had scored 175 runs in their first innings.
J&K were struggling at 16/3 in 9 overs in their second essay when the stumps were drawn today.
Earlier, resuming from an overnight score of 26/0, speedster Ramdayal wrecked havoc in the Himachal Pradesh camp by scalping their first six wickets for paltry 58 runs. He made full use of the seaming conditions and made the ball to swung, bounce and wobble almost to a perfection. However, after losing 6 wickets quickly for a meagre total of 58 runs in 26.2 overs, the duo of MS Sharma (28) and AS Bhalaik (40) made a valuable partnership of 65 runs and took the score to 123 runs in 57.2 overs, before off-spinner Parvez Rasool trapped MS Sharma LBW. Then a wicket by left-arm spinner Wasim Raza, speedster Sameer Ali and second one by Parvez Rasool helped J&K to restrict HP at 189 runs in 80.2 overs, but not before taking a vital first innings 16-run lead. For J&K, Ramdayal was pick of the bowlers, who scalped 6 important wickets in his 28 overs by conceding 50 runs with 12 maidens, while Parvez Rasool claimed 2 wickets by giving away 31 runs in his 14 overs. Sameer Ali and Wasim Raza took one wicket each.
Beginning their second innings, J&K lost 3 quick wickets in the form of skipper Ian Dev Singh (00), Manish Dogra (04) and Aditya Pratap Singh (05). R Dhawan and Vikramjeet Malik were the successful bowlers, who took 2 and one wicket respectively.
With 13 wickets falling on day-2 among which 10 went to fast bowlers, the strip simply supports the bowlers. For that matter, the match hangs in balance, as anything over 175 runs will be a tough ask for the team batting last on this bowling friendly wicket.
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