Indore: Rajesh Chauhan (5-99) and his fellow spinners bowled their hearts out to force Railways to follow on on the third day of the Central Zone Ranji Trophy league match at Indore yesterday

Mahaveer Singh Arya

14-Nov-1999

Indore: Rajesh Chauhan (5-99) and his fellow spinners bowled their hearts out to force Railways to follow on on the third day of the Central Zone Ranji Trophy league match at Indore yesterday. Having made 538-7 declared in their first innings, MP bowled Railways out for 216. Railways had made three without loss in their second innings.

Resuming at 55-1, the Railways batsmen struggled throughout the day against the all spin MP attack. Excepting captain Prahlad Rawat who batted for 259 minutes and Abhay Sharma who played for 217 minutes, none of the Railways batsmen were comfortable against Chauhan, Hirwani, Majithia, Lahore and Abbas Ali. MP desperately need an outright victory in this match as they have only six points from two previous matches.

Rajesh Chauhan became the sixth MP bowler to capture 200 wickets in the Ranji Trophy when he dismissed Zakir Hussain. He thus emulated the feat of Narendra Hirwani (307), C.S. Nayudu (295), Chandu Sarwate (285), Hiralal Gaikwad (278) and Sunil Lahore (226). Chauhan was playing in his 59th match. He made his debut against Rajasthan at Rajnandgaon in 1988-89 claiming 7-39 and 4-3.

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Krishnakumar bowls Rajasthan to innings victory

Jaipur: Rajasthan coasted to an innings and 74 run victory over Vidarbha with a day to spare in the Central Zone Ranji Trophy league match at Jaipur on Saturday

14-Nov-1999

Jaipur: Rajasthan coasted to an innings and 74 run victory over Vidarbha with a day to spare in the Central Zone Ranji Trophy league match at Jaipur on Saturday.

Resuming at 423 for eight in reply to Vidarbha's first innings total of 163, Rajasthan were all out for 442. In deficit by 279 runs, Vidarbha after a poor in which they lost three wickets for 44 were always struggling to avoid an innings defeat. Only defiant knocks by AV Deshpande (50, 77 balls, four boundaries) and UV Gandhe (65, 129 balls, eight fours, one six) saw Vidarbha reach 205. Krishnakumar sealed Vidarbha's fate with a fine spell of 9.1-2-31-5. Rajasthan got eight points and Vidarbha zero.

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Surprise changes to SA A team after easy victory

Centurion: One of the national selectors, Clive Rice, paid what appeared to be a ``courtesy call'' at SuperSport Park yesterday and got an eyeful of why South Africa A have become the professional, unbeatable side they are

Trevor Chesterfield

14-Nov-1999

He then left his calling card in the dressing room and gave the management team an insight into the sort of muddled thinking the national selectors are applying to what is, in essence, a prestige side by announcing three changes to the team which thrashed Sri Lanka A by an innings and 116 runs with more than a day in hand.

Rice did not stick around long enough to see Dale Benkensteins side wipe the floor with their Sri Lanka A opponents but the fall out from his announcement is going to take some time before ruffled feathers are smoothed over.

Nothing has been officially released but from all accounts Nic Pothas, Neil McKenzie and David Terbrugge have been relieved of their places which have been handed over to Justin Kemp, Wendell Bossenger and Arno Jacobs.

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Tailenders help Haryana to recover

Rohtak: Useful contributions by the tailenders helped Haryana to stage a recovery against Himachal Pradesh on the opening day of their fourth match of the North Zone Ranji Trophy league at the Vishwakarma stadium here today

Anil Gulati

14-Nov-1999

Haryana's last three wickets added exactly 100 runs to enable the team to reach a respectable total of 222 in their first innings.

Haryana won the toss and elected to bat. The opening pair of Jitender Singh and Sanjay Balwan put on 47 runs for the first wicket before Balwan was caught behind off medium pacer Shakti Singh. Balwan made 14 runs in 42 balls. Five overs later it was Jitender's turn to leave the ground. He was adjudged leg before wicket to Rahul Panta for 26 runs. He hit four boundaries.

Skipper Parender Sharma and Sanjay Dalal contributed 24 and 23 runs respectively before being dismissed by Shakti Singh. Amarjeet Kaypee scored 35 to emerge as the highest scorer before he was caught behind off Rahul Panta. At one stage Haryana was in deep trouble having lost seven wickets for 122 runs. A strokeful innings of 30 runs in 34 balls by Vineet Jain and a valuable 28 by Pankaj Thakur enabled Haryana to reach their ultimate total.

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Assam tail defies Bengal

Calcutta: A fine show by the Assam tailenders featured the second day of the East Zone Ranji Trophy league tie against Bengal here on Saturday

14-Nov-1999

Calcutta: A fine show by the Assam tailenders featured the second day of the East Zone Ranji Trophy league tie against Bengal here on Saturday.

Resuming at 225 for six, Assam did well to post a challenging total of 347. The overnight not out batsmen SR Das (39) and R Bora (38) took the score to 264 before the former was out. Then Bora and Sukhwinder Singh (24) added 33 runs for the eighth wicket. And finally Dutta (34 not out) and Zaman (4), the last two batsmen put on 42 runs off 16 overs. Bengal skipper U Chatterjee was the most successful bowler taking five wickets for 54 off 33.5 overs.

When Bengal batted, Nikhil Haldipur (33) and DD Gupta (22) gave them a good start and then Rohan Gavaskar (42 not out) and S Kalyani (28 not out) carried on the good work as Bengal finished with 137 for two off 42.1 overs at stumps. Sukhwinder Singh took both the Bengal wickets for 32 runs.

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Sodhi's ton places Punjab in command

Ludhiana: Reetinder Sodhi's unbeaten century put Punjab in a commanding position as they scored 276 for two at the draw of stumps against Delhi on the first day of their fourth league match of this season's Ranji Trophy four day match at the Punjab

Rajesh Arora

14-Nov-1999

Punjab skipper Vikram Rathour again proved lucky with the coin and rightfully opted to bat first on a hard and dry wicket. Rathour and Reetinder Sodhi opened the innings. Rathour enjoyed an early life as he was dropped from the second ball of the innings at fine leg by Robin Singh junior off Ashish Nehra. Rathour then played his natural game and hit 8 boundaries and two huge sixes during his knock of 75 runs which came off 129 balls. The duo added 128 runs for the opening wicket off 243 balls. Rathour was caught at deep mid wicket by Mithun Manhas as he mistimed a pull off Harinder Chaudhary.

Yuvraj Singh who came in at the fall of Rathour's wicket was dismissed by Ashish Nehra's devastating yorker before opening his account. Pankaj Dharmani (77*) who joined Sodhi (104*) was in trouble as he was dropped twice by Ajay Sharma and Akash Malhotra at 13 and 17. The bowler to suffer on both the occasions was Sandeep Angurala.

Reetinder Sodhi who was playing with a cool head at the other end motivated Dharmani and they consolidated the innings by taking singles and twos. Sodhi completed his second century in style as he made an extra cover drive off Harinder Chaudhary. He stayed at the wicket for the whole day and faced 260 balls, almost half of the balls bowled today. His knock contained eleven sweetly timed boundaries. This was his 21st innings of the 16th Ranji match. His first century was also against Delhi which was an unbeaten double hundred in 1997-98.

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Bihar snatch narrow first innings lead

Agartala: Tripura lost their last four wickets without the addition of a run enabling Bihar to snatch a narrow first innings lead of two runs over Tripura on the second day of the East Zone Ranji Trophy league match here on Saturday

14-Nov-1999

Resuming at 25 for one in reply to Bihar's first innings total of 174, Tripura lost wickets at regular intervals and were badly placed at 112 for six. Prajapati and Chowdhuri then figured in a seventh wicket stand of 60 runs which brought Tripura tantalisingly close to taking the lead. At 172 for 7, Tripura seemed well set to take the lead. Then came the sudden collapse. First, Chowdhuri was bowled by Saxena for 34. Off the third ball of the next over bowled by Dhiraj Kumar, Alok Saha was run out. Off the next delivery S.Bose was leg before for zero. And two balls later, IS Ghosh was also out leg before for zero leaving Prajapati unbeaten with 37. Prajapati batted patiently for 254 minutes and faced 186 balls without hitting even one boundary. The last four Tripura wickets fell in 11 balls for no run.

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Liebenberg, Hamilton shine in England-Combined XI match

Bloemfontein: Former South African Test player, Gerhardus Liebenberg, proved to be a thorn in England's side as a Combined Free State/Griqualand West XI held their own against the tourists on the second day of their four-day match at Goodyear Park on

Michael Finch

14-Nov-1999

At close, Liebenberg had scored an unbeaten 80 to help the Combined XI reach 156 for three, still 202 runs behind overall after England had declared at lunch on 358 for nine.

Against an England attack that only fired in patches, Liebenberg stood firm during early onslaughts from speedster Darren Gough, scoring his runs off 194 balls with 11 fours.

Together with Martyn Gidley, he put on 81 for the first wicket before Gough bowled Gidley for 37 off 103 balls (3x4, 1x6). With Finlay Brooker (0) and Piet Barnard (3) going cheaply, it was left to Morne van Wyk to heed the call and by the close the two had put on 55 for the fourth wicket.

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Full-strength Blues tame toothless Tigers

John Polack

14-Nov-1999

After they were permitted to witness something of an act of self-destruction through the middle stages of their opponents' innings, New South Wales' cricketers have ensured that the North Sydney Oval remains a bogey venue for Tasmania with a 21 run win in the teams' Mercantile Mutual match there today. Defending a total of 9/277 which appeared to be no more than a moderate score given the tiny dimensions of the ground, the home team prevailed comfortably as they restricted the Tasmanians to 8/256 in reply on an excellent batting pitch.

Having been invited to bat first by rival skipper Jamie Cox, the home team found itself in early trouble at 2/21 before Corey Richards (70), Michael Bevan (46), Shane Lee (46) and Michael Slater (45) combined to stabilise and then add lustre to the effort. Continuing what has been a season of mixed fortunes for him, Richards was the star and his effort in holding the top order together before accelerating his scoring rate late in his innings was a fine one. Bevan also played particularly well and made the most of a dubious decision by Umpire Cameron to deny the Tasmanians what appeared a clear caught behind verdict when his score was just 13.

Tasmania received a strong start to the pursuit as Jamie Cox (54) and Ricky Ponting (26) steered it to a score of 1/85 at one point, but the needless run out of the latter after he slammed a ball straight to Bevan at cover in the nineteenth over and then attempted an always suicidal run sowed the seeds for a disappointing chase for the remainder of the afternoon. Against an attack led capably by speedster Brett Lee (2/40), Shane Lee (1/37) and the somewhat expensive leg spinner Stuart MacGill (2/64), the visitors continued to struggle to score runs quickly enough, they threw wickets away at regular intervals and, despite some outrageous late hitting from the normally patient Dene Hills (49* off 42 balls), could never really establish the requisite momentum required for them to claim a still elusive first ever win at this ground.