Patient Tamil Nadu march on

Tamil Nadu 426 for 5 (Karthik 113, Shankar 91, Prasanna 64*, Indrajith 68*) v Maharashtra

Dinesh Karthik completed his 22nd first-class century, while Vijay Shankar narrowly missed out on his third, as Tamil Nadu marched on to a big score, losing only two wickets on the second day.

There was little respite for Maharashtra until the 32nd over of the day when Chirag Khurana ended Shankar's resistance. But he had by then raised 190 runs with Karthik for the fourth wicket.

It took Maharashtra 20.5 overs to pick up another wicket, that of Karthik, who had completed his third century of the tournament. He was caught behind for 113 off Shrikant Mundhe, who sent down 40 overs.

R Prasanna and B Indrajith made sure they built on the base, and proceeded to add 107 undefeated runs. Despite a marginal improvement from Wednesday, Tamil Nadu's scoring-rate was still less than 2.5 runs per over. Apart from Mundhe, three other Maharashtra seamers bowled more than 30 overs.

Karthik defended the approach, pointing to the "slow" nature of the surface. "It still has a little bit in it for fast bowlers," he told ESPNcricinfo. "They [Maharashtra] are not bowling on the stumps, but are bowling far outside, and waiting for you to play a bad shot. Yesterday, the wicket was fresh, and it was a bold decision by Abhi [Abhinav Mukund] to bat first, and it was a good decision."

Karthik said the intention was to bat Maharashtra out of the game. "You can say that. We want to keep playing for as long as we can. The format itself is such that there is no hurry at all. I don't think we have any target in mind."