Jharkhand stare at innings defeat

Dhanbad: Hosts Jharkhand face a herculean task of making Tripura bat again as they stare at innings defeat at the end of third day’s play in their first Ranji Trophy home match at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium at Jealgora in Dhanbad on Tuesday. Jharkhand still trail Tripura by 93 runs with five wickets in hand. The second-innings score reads 127/5 in 41 overs. Ishank Jaggi (32 batting) and Kaushal Singh are at the crease.
After taking a huge 220-run lead with the first-innings score of 362, Tripura pacers Manisankar Murasingh and Abhijit Sarkar displayed a beautiful piece of seam bowling to reduce Jharkhand to 45/4 in 15 overs before tea. First-innings hero Rana Dutta was a bit off-colour, giving away 45 runs in 10 overs without success but Murasingh and Sarkar bowled perfect line and length to raise the chance of an ignominious innings defeat for the hosts on the third day itself. Murasingh and Sarkar’s first spells read 9-5-16-2 and 5-3-2-2, respectively.
It was Kumar Deobrat (44) and Jaggi who stemmed the rot but Deobrat paid the price for losing his composure towards the end of the day as he tried to cut off-spinner Viki Saha, only to see the edge going into the safe hands of Kaushal Acharjee, who demands a special mention as he took two excellent diving catches standing at second slip to seend back Jharkhand openers Manish Vardhan and Rameez Nemat.
Subroto Ghosh and Saurabh Tiwary edged Murasingh behind the stumps. Captain Tiwary was out on the first ball he faced, edging down the leg side.
Earlier, overnight unbeaten batsmen Abhijit Dey (65, 204 balls, 7x4) and Acharjee (61, 133 balls, 6x4, 1x6) frustrated the hosts with an 111-run partnership for the seventh wicket. It was mainly because of their half-centuries that Tripura could build on the lead taken on Monday. Medium pacer Dutta made a useful contribution of 28 to help the visitors reach 362.
Tiwary started the day’s proceedings with pacers Ajay Yadav and Kaushal but they failed to provide any early breakthrough, bowling short and wide of the stumps on a bright sunny morning. But that does not take away anything from the way Tripura batsmen batted. None of the lower-order batsmen was in hurry to throw away his wicket. The grit and intensity shown by the Tripura batsmen was in total contrast with Jharkhand’s bowling.
Desperate situations call for desperate measures but the hosts were never seen trying for wickets. On the contrary, their body language suggested they were waiting for wickets to fall. Even after getting no help from the pitch, Jharkhand tweakers were hardly seen using flighted deliveries or bowling fuller to invite the batsmen for drive.
Taking into account the fact that Acharjee and Dey are right-handers, it was strange to see off-spinner Sunny Gupta coming into the attack 28 overs after the start of play. Off the very first delivery he bowled, there was a strong appeal for lbw against Dey. It was the 136th over of Tripura innings and in any case, Gupta was the only spinner to turn the ball right from day one. So Tiwary’s decision to carry on with left-arm spinner Nadeem and leggie Samar Quadri was really strange. He also did not try giving the ball to part-time spinners Vardhan or Jaggi. Neither did he try to take the responsibility himself.
Hosts’ fielding was also uninspiring as Nemat grassed Dey at long-off when the Tripura captain was on 52, and Yadav dropped Saha at square leg boundary, both off Nadeem. Though Nemat’s was a sharp chance, Yadav missed a sitter.