JAIPUR: Basking under the full-blown sunshine on a wintry December day, Sachin Baby scored his eighth first-class century, a carefully crafted unbeaten 109 off 174 balls, against Rajasthan on day two of a Group C Ranji Trophy match at the SMS Stadium on Wednesday.
He crunched 13 boundaries and in the company of his captain Sanju Samson, who slammed a 108-ball 82, seemed to have helped Kerala recover from a dismal start.
But things changed quickly after Sanju’s dismissal. With the 145-run partnership broken, the centurion of the day was left alone to hold the Kerala innings together.
Four wickets fell in the last session with Kerala at 268/8, trailing by 69 runs at stumps. Earlier, it was quite an eventful first couple of hours as eight wickets fell after Rajasthan resumed from the overnight score of 310/5. Moisture in the pitch assisted seamers of both the sides.
First, Kerala bowled out the hosts within 14 overs as MD Nidheesh and Basil Thampi did most of the damage and restricted Rajasthan to 337. Then came Rajasthan’s left-arm seamer Aniket Choudhary, who gobbled three quick wickets to send the visitors’ top-order packing.
It was in the 13th over that Sanju-Baby duo took guard with the score reading 31 for 3. While Sanju was quick to get off the blocks, southpaw Baby happily played the second fiddle. Their growing partnership started to look like a potential threat to Rajasthan’s ambition to gain the first inning lead.
But soon after tea, Sanju lofted towards long-on and holed out to Salman Khan, giving left-arm spinner Manav Suthar his first wicket of the match. The Rajasthan youngster then bagged two more wickets towards the end of the day's play, finishing with the figures of 22-2-75-3.
Brief scores: Rajasthan 337 all out in 97.1 overs (Deepak Hooda 133; Jalaj Saxena 3/78) vs Kerala 268/ 8 in 73 overs (Sachin Baby 109, Sanju Samson 82; Aniket Choudhary 3/73, Manav Suthar 3/75).
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