8 March 1999

A race between Jacob Martin & Vijay Bhardwaj

Mohandas Menon

Baroda's Jacob Martin became the sixth batsman in Ranji trophy history to reach 1000 runs in a season during his second innings score of 19 against Punjab (Ranji Trophy Super League, 1998-99) at Baroda on Saturday (06-03-99). He has now scored 1018 runs and now needs just 17 runs to surpass the record of late Raman Lamba of 1034 runs in 1996-97 season. Baroda has still one more match to play against Hyderabad (from 13th March). However, Karnataka's R Vijay Bhardwaj who crossed the mark a day earlier now has 1022 runs to his credit during this season. Since Karnataka has reached the knock-out round, Bhardwaj too has an excellent opportunity to surpass Lamba. So its a race between Martin and Bhardwaj.

Vijay Bhardwaj's scores during this Ranji Trophy season (1998-99) for Karnataka

v Andhra 53 & 75 v Tamil Nadu 171 v Goa 31 v Kerala 200* v Madhya Pradesh 45 & 10 v Haryana 175 v Saurashtra 87* & 51 v Bihar 124

Jacob Martin's scores during this Ranji Trophy season (1998-99) for Baroda

v Saurashtra 108 v Maharashtra 103* v Mumbai 43 & 82 v Gujarat 27 & 177* v Bengal 242 v Rajasthan 29 & 100* v Punjab 88 & 19

The complete list of players scoring 1000 runs in a Ranji Trophy season Season Teams M Ins No Runs HS Avg 100 50 Raman Lamba 1996-97 Delhi 10 14 - 1034 250 73.86 3 4 AK Sharma 1996-97 Delhi 8 10 1 1033 220* 114.78 5 3 R Vijay Bhardwaj 1998-99 Karnataka 8 11 9 1022 200* 113.55 4 4 WV Raman 1988-89 Tamil Nadu 7 9 2 1018 313 145.42 3 1 JJ Martin 1998-99 Baroda 7 11 3 1018 242 127.25 5 2 RS Modi 1944-45 Bimbay 5 7 1 1008 245* 168.00 5 1

Source :: Cricinfo, Chennai