Ranji Trophy 2018-19: Railways avoids follow-on against Mumbai on Day 3

Resuming at a disappointing 115 for six, Railways, riding on some sound batting by Arindam Ghosh, Avinash Yadav, Anureet Singh and Harsh Tyagi, finished with 104 runs in arrears.

Medium-fast Tushar Deshpande (middle) distinguished himself with a sterling spell as he got the ball to `carry’ and also unnerve the batsmen with some short-pitched ones.

Railways discovered its batting potential in the first match of the season when the lower half put on 192 runs to enable the team to avoid a follow-on on the penultimate day of the Ranji Trophy Elite `A’ match against Mumbai at the Karnail Singh Stadium, here, on Saturday.

Resuming at a disappointing 115 for six, Railways, riding on some sound batting by Arindam Ghosh, Avinash Yadav, Anureet Singh and Harsh Tyagi, finished with 104 runs in arrears. At stumps, Mumbai was 57 for two.

Medium-fast Tushar Deshpande distinguished himself with a sterling spell as he got the ball to `carry’ and also unnerve the batsmen with some short-pitched ones. His six for 70 was a reward for putting heart into his work on a pitch where the challenge was to bowl stump to stump.

AS IT HAPPENED:  Ranji Trophy 2018-19, Day 3

“The pitch is low on the bounce and we had decided to come in short spells. I knew I had to put in a hundred per cent show to put pressure. The aggression helped me in fine tuning my style,” said Deshpande, who learnt his initial lessons from his father (Uday) before embarking upon his cricket journey under Omkar Salvi at Shivaji Park. He took to fast bowling because he discovered the waiting period to learn batting was a “bit long.”

Deshpande’s strikes came too late for Mumbai since Railways managed to overcome the follow-on challenge. Ghosh added 36 to his overnight score before his 197-ball innings (8x4, 1x6) ended to a leg-before decision. His 58-run stand with debutant Tyagi (142b, 4x4, 1x6) for the seventh wicket gave Railways the motivation with Avinash Yadav showing the way with a disciplined show.

“Avinash played a positive game and that helped us a lot,” said Tyagi. In his 43-ball essay, Yadav hit five fours and three sixes, while Anureet remained unbeaten on 38 off 45 balls with seven fours.

The scores:

Mumbai-1st innings: 411.

Railways-1st innings: Saurabh Wakaskar c and b Dube 23, Nitin Bhille b Deshpande 2, Pratham Singh b Kulkarni 4, Arindam Ghosh lbw b Kothari 71, Abhinav Dixit (run out) 4, Mahesh Rawat c Herwadkar b Deshpande 30, Manish Rao c Bista b Deshpande 3, Harsh Tyagi c Tare b Deshpande 39, Avinash Yadav c Herwadkar b Deshpande 48, Madhur Khatri c Dube b Deshpande 29, Anureet Singh (not out) 38, Extras (b-5, lb-5, nb-5, w-2) 10, Total (all out in 104.2 overs) 307.

Fall of wickets: 1-3, 2-16, 3-46, 4-62, 5-111, 6-115, 7-173, 8-238, 9-241.

Mumbai bowling: Dhawal Kulkarni 21-8-60-1, Tushar Deshpande 24.2-7-70-6, Shivam Dube 20-5-36-1, Karsh Kothari 15-4-42-1, Shams Mulani 17-2-77-0, Jay Bista 7-3-12-0.

Mumbai-2nd innings: Jay Bista lbw b Rao 5, Akhil Herwadkar (batting) 24, Siddhesh Lad (batting) 13, Extras 0, Total (for two wickets in 25 overs) 57.

Fall of wickets: 1-5, 2-34.

Railways bowling: Anureet 6-1-17-0, Rao 6-1-10-1, Tyagi 6-3-7-1, Khatri 5-1-14-0, Yadav 2-0-9-0.