Players preach patience on tricky Chinnaswamy pitch

On a day when neither team owned bragging rights - though Vidarbha might believe they have a slight edge - there was heavy emphasis on the need for patience from players on both sides. Patience, on a surface which neither side has completely worked out yet.

While CM Gautam, the unbeaten Karnataka batsman from today, repeatedly spoke about its sluggish nature, Vidarbha's left-arm seamer Ravikumar Thakur, who removed Manish Pandey and Karun Nair late in the day, admitted to misreading the surface.

"It looked green, so that must have prompted the captain to field," Thakur said, explaining the rationale behind bowling first. "We thought there was grass on the wicket and we could get two or three early wickets in the first session. But you can't predict the wicket."

Gautam, too, suggested that despite the early movement there wasn't any pace on the track. "The wicket is a bit on the slower side, spongy bounce," he said. "Because there was a bit of movement early on and the wicket was on slower side, we thought till lunch we will just play out without losing any wickets, but we lost two wickets."

Gautam said the approach of Pandey and Nair was ideal in such conditions. "I think they batted beautifully. They took their own time. They got used to the wicket. Initially they were playing little slow.

"The wicket is on slower side, so stroke-play is not that easy, that's the reason Manish and Karun, who are stroke-players, took their own time to get used to the wicket and the bowlers. "

Gautam said a score in the range of 450 to 500 will be good, and it was "unfortunate" his team lost three wickets in roughly the last ten overs. Karnataka slipped first from 266 to 3 to 267 for 5, and then lost Shreyas Gopal in the last over to end the day on 298 for 6.

"It was unfortunate losing three wickets in the last 10 overs. At the same time cricket is played like that. Suddenly you lose two or three wickets. It's all about how you recover in the morning tomorrow," he said.

Thakur said Vidarbha's game plan was centred around patience, but he rued the fact that they weren't economical enough."The plan was to bowl a good line and length, area daalna hai [bowl in the right areas] and focus on ourselves because the wicket didn't act like a green top," he said. "We wanted to remain patient and wait for the wickets to fall. In that process our bowlers did leak a few runs - we conceded 30 more than we wanted to."