Washington Sundar and Pradosh Ranjan Paul feasted on Delhi’s sub-standard spin attack to hit hundreds as Tamil Nadu drowned Delhi under a deluge of runs to take complete control of their Group D Ranji Trophy match at the end of second day here on Saturday.
Tamil Nadu declared their first innings at 674 for 6 and in the remaining time, Delhi reached 43 for no loss in 16 overs with stand-in opener Harsh Tyagi joining Sanat Sangwan after regular opener Dhruv Kaushik split his webbing.
Delhi are also hamstrung by an on-field injury to all-rounder Pranshu Vijayaran and not conceding an innings defeat to Tamil Nadu would be a big achievement for the hosts.
After Sai Sudharsan’s (213) double ton on the opening day, his fellow India international Washington Sundar repaid the team management’s faith of promoting him to No. 3 as he scored a polished 152 off 269 balls with 19 fours and a six.
Having added 232 for the second wicket with Sudharsan, Washington shared another 92 runs for the fourth wicket with India ‘A’ batter Paul (117 off 175 balls) while Andre Siddharth also chipped in with an unbeaten 66.
Navdeep Saini (2/78 in 24 overs) was the only bowler who looked like making some kind of difference but questions will be asked about the quality of the two spinners — left-arm orthodox Tyagi (1/181 in 37.4 overs) and unfit-looking off-break bowler Mayank Rawat (0/194 in 50 overs), who were cut, pulled, driven, swept and lofted to all parts of the Kotla.
In total, the two specialist spinners bowled close to 88 overs and they had only three maidens which showed that they couldn’t even check the run-flow, forget about getting breakthroughs.
Tyagi, a former India U-19 spinner was released by Delhi a few seasons back and went to Railways where also he failed to find a footing and was back in DDCA fold since last year.
He has been rewarded for his DPL performance but neither chief selector Gursharan Singh nor head coach Sarandeep Singh looked at specialist red ball spinner Sumit Mathur, who got nine wickets on his debut during the final match of last season.
Both Tyagi and Rawat consistently bowled short and were hammered into submission. With Pranshu Vijayran injured while bowling his sixth over on the opening day, skipper Himmat Singh continued using Rawat even as Tamil Nadu batters made merry.
While Tyagi was hit for 21 boundaries and a six, Rawat conceded 19 hits to the fence plus two maximums. In the outfield, he was sloth and often allowed ones to be converted into twos. One doesn’t know what kind of tests senior Ranji team has undergone but Rawat in any top first-class team wouldn’t even qualify if fitness is the main criteria.
Brief Scores:
In Delhi: TN 1st Innings 674/6 decl (B Sai Sudharsan 213, Washington Sundar 152, Pradosh Ranjan Paul 117). Delhi 1st Innings 43/0.
In Rajkot: Chattisgarh 1st Innings 578/7 (Amandeep Khare 203 batting, Sanjeet Desai 146, Parth Bhut 2/138, Dharmendra Jadeja 2/118).
In Ahmedabad: Jharkhand 1st Innings 417 (Ishan Kishan 101, Virat Singh 128, Nazim Siddique 96, Himanshu Sangwan 5/94). Railways 1st Innings 19/1.
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