Gujarat stare down the barrel against MP

Ahmedabad: Gujarat squandered a position of promise and now find themselves fighting to save the match against defending champions Madhya Pradesh on Thursday in their Elite Ranji Trophy Group ‘B’ encounter in Indore. Resuming at 159/4, Gujarat captain Priyank Panchal, who was unbeaten on 71 overnight, didn’t come out to bat owing to an injury.
The rest of the lower-middle order capitulated without much of a fight even as the other overnight batter Manan Hingrajia helped himself to a half-century.Chintan Gaja, whose 70/6 helped Gujarat bowl out MP for 312 in their first innings, was the first batter to be dismissed in the morning. He was trapped in front by Gaurav Yadav for 8.
Tejas Patel hung around for 12 runs but was caught by Rajat Patidar off Puneet Datey’s bowling. Thereafter, southpaw Hingrajia, who made 66 off 184 balls with the help of two sixes and five boundaries, was trapped in front of the wicket by Saransh Jain.
Left-arm spinner Kumar Kartikeya then polished off the innings with two wickets of two balls as MP gained a first innings lead of 101. For MP, Kartikeya, Jain and Yadav took two wickets apiece while Datey and Anubhav Agarwal grabbed a wicket each.
Apart from Panchal and Hingrajia, only three other Gujarat batters made double digit score.
In their second essay, MP put on an assured batting display to reach 189/2 courtesy half-century from Himanshu Mantri. Mantri and Dubey put on 104 for the opening wicket before the latter was stumped by Het Patel off left-arm spinner Siddharth Desai’s bowling for 39.
Mantri, who made a fine 159 in the first innings, was bowled by Tejas Patel for 65. At stumps, Rajat Patidar was batting on 33 along with Shubham Sharma on 46.