Tiwary, Naved and rain seal draw for Bengal

Bengal 312 (Chatterjee 145, Saha 90, Vinay 4-80) and 249 for 4 (Tiwary 103*, Naved 95) drew with Karnataka 537 for 9 dec (Gopal 139, Nair 126, Bhavane 119, Veer Pratap 4-86)
Scorecard

Bengal captain Manoj Tiwary and debutant Naved Ahmed saved Bengal with the help of rain to draw against Karnataka in Bangalore. The hosts were in a dominating position when the day started, with a lead of 167 runs and two Bengal batsmen dismissed, before Tiwary's unbeaten century and Naved's 95 ensured Bengal got one point. Rain interrupted play minutes before tea and the match was called off within an hour after that.

Even if rain had not come down, Bengal were heading towards a comfortable position on a pitch that did not have much for bowlers. Tiwary and Naved saw through a watchful morning session and took their team into the lead when both were in the 90s with seven wickets in hand. Tiwary brought up his 20th first-class hundred, but Naved was soon run out five runs short of what would have been another century from a debutant this season.

The most crucial part of the day was when Naved and Tiwary withstood the first session, as Karnataka started with a silly mid-off and short extra cover. The ball was fairly new and Sudip Chatterjee fell in the fifth over by going for an extravagant and unnecessary drive to be caught at second slip off Abhimanyu Mithun.

At 65 for 3, Bengal's deficit was still over 150 when Naved and Tiwary came together. The Karnataka bowlers persisted with a nagging and attacking line outside off.

Naved relied on straight-bat shots to play the waiting game, and so did Tiwary by leaving more deliveries than his partner. Bengal were not looking for runs, they only had to play out most of the day and the two batsmen did exactly that by standing firm against Mithun's first spell of 4-3-3-1.

Tiwary allowed Naved to do the scoring early on to take the score past 100. Once the ball lost its shine, both batsmen scored freely. Tiwary started driving and punching comfortably and soon caught up with Naved. Vinay Kumar used all his bowlers with close-in fielders, but with no success and both batsmen reached their fifties before lunch.

The story didn't change after the break. Vinay brought himself on for another short yet unthreatening spell, and Tiwary started off by creaming a cover drive against Shreyas Gopal for four. Naved unleashed his firm drives as well and collected boundaries in consecutive overs to strengthen Bengal's position further. Now that the partnership was appearing unbreakable, Karnataka's only hope was the second new ball.

Vinay took it as soon as it was available, 22 overs after lunch with Tiwary on 93 and Naved on 84, only to be flicked by the latter to the midwicket boundary, which gave Bengal the lead.

The only thing left in the match was for the Bengal dressing room to applaud for the two centuries. Tiwary brought his up by nudging Vinay to the leg side but when he cut J Suchith to sweeper cover, Naved was late to react for the second run and an alert Vinay at slip caught Karun Nair's throw to hit the stumps at the other end, finding Naved marginally short.

When rain came down, Bengal were leading by 24 runs with six wickets in hand, and soon play was called off.

Man-of-the-Match Tiwary said he was pleased with his team's performance even though they got only one point in their opening match of the season. "We were looking for more [points], but happy to fight it out against the champion side after the situation we were in," he said. "If there was no partnership between me and Naved, it would have been difficult for us.

"This also shows that we're heading in the right direction. There is a lot of improvement from last year. This type of effort from us was lacking the last couple of seasons."