Syed rocks Karnataka; Chahar shines on first day again

J Syed Mohammad is a proper journeyman domestic cricketer. During one of his many voyage, he has called Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium his home ground while playing for Royal Challengers Bangalore. On the first day of the Ranji Trophy of 2015-16, Syed ran through the real home team of the Chinnaswamy Stadium, double defending champions Karnataka, with his best first-class figures of 7 for 44. Karnataka, who chose to bat, were bowled out for 187, thanks largely to lower-order runs scored in the company of young left-hand batsman Shishir Bhavane.

Karnataka were missing the injured Manish Pandey, but they had enough batting strength in the in-form Mayank Agarwal, veteran Robin Uthappa and Karun Nair, who has recently been a part of India's Test squad. They all fell to Syed as he took six wickets in his first spell to reduce Karnataka to 104 for 7. Bhavane, though, scored 65 runs in partnerships with J Suchith and Abhimanyu Mithun. In the 12 overs remaining after the end of Karnataka's innings, Vinay Kumar took a wicket, but it was Assam's day overall.

Deepak Chahar shot to fame with his showing on the first day of the 2010-11 season as he took eight wickets to bowl Hyderabad out for 21. What happened on day one at the same ground five years later wasn't as dramatic, but his five-for helped Rajasthan shoot Delhi out for 138 in what might be a more important spell for him. He is part of a controversial team, other sides know his bowling well now and are better equipped against his swing. The home team were without the injured Pankaj Singh as an ad-hoc-committee-controlled Rajasthan took to the field against Delhi, the only team whose administrators can beat theirs when it comes to controversy.

Gautam Gambhir, Delhi's captain who has stayed back despite offers from Bengal, resisted for a while, scoring 24 out of Delhi's 53 for 4, but once he fell a procession followed. Chahar, making use of the conditions after Rajasthan inserted Delhi, took the wickets of Unmukt Chand, Gambhir, Milind Kumar, Yogesh Nagar and Parvinder Awana. A counterattack from Sumit Narwal took Delhi to 138, but Pranay Sharma's 42 in reply meant they didn't carry any momentum when they bowled. Narwal took two wickets to keep Delhi interested, and Pradeep Sangwan's wicket of Pranay just before stumps will give them further hope, but Rajasthan would have been the happier team at the end of the day.

Vidarbha 256 for 6 (Shanware 119, Satish 53, Mohanty 2-31) v Odisha
Scorecard

Vidarbha opener Aditya Shanware struck a ton on his first-class debut, helping his team to 256 for 6 against Odisha in Nagpur. Vidarbha, batting first, began promisingly, as Shanware strung together fifty-plus stands for the first two wickets, with Jitesh Sharma (49) and Ganesh Satish (53). The hosts were well set at 173 for 1, but Odisha's medium-pacers Basant Mohanty and Suryakant Pradhan dealt key blows at regular intervals, and Vidarbha soon found themselves at 197 for 5. Shanware and Ravi Jangid stopped the slide with a 57-run partnership for the sixth wicket, but Vidarbha suffered a big setback towards the end of the day, as Shanware was dismissed for 119 in the 88th over.

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