Haldipur, Gavaskar put Bengal in driver's seat

A second wicket partnership of 123 runs off 175 balls between Nikhil Haldipur (92) and Rohan Gavaskar (53) placed Bengal in the driver's seat in their Ranji Trophy Super League match against Delhi at Calcutta on Thursday. Bengal finished the day at 194 for four wickets when play was called off 19.2 overs before the scheduled close of play due to bad light.

Earlier, the Bengal bowlers had restricted Delhi to 236 in the first knock with opener Akash Chopra being the top scorer with 95. It was a marathon knock that saw occupy the crease for 437 minutes. He faced 328 balls and hit 12 boundaries. He was the last batsman to be dismissed off Utpal Chatterjee, caught at slip by Saurav Ganguly. Laxmi Ratan Shukla took the wickets of Rahul Sanghvi and Sanjay Gill to finish with four wickets while Sumit Panda started the slide dismissing Nikhil Chopra in the third over of the morning.

Bengal were rocked early as Gill had Devang Gandhi caught behind for a duck. Then Haldipur and the junior Gavaskar took over. Both played freely in front of the wicket and never allowed the bowlers to dominate. Haldipur was severe on Robin Singh (jr) whom he hit for three fours in an over. Just when he looked set for his sixth Ranji Trophy hundred he holed out to mid on of the bowling of Rahul Sanghvi. It was a rash shot. His 92 was compiled off 118 balls with 16 boundaries. Gavaskar completed his 50 gliding Chopra to the fine leg fence. But he perished in the next over bowled by Sanghvi. He tried to loft him over mid off and was caught by Chopra.

In walked Ganguly. The 8000-odd crowd which had gathered to watch him however, were disappointed as he fell for five. He was not fully forward to a ball from Chopra and the resultant pad-bat was snapped up at silly point by substitute Gautam Gambhir for only five. At stumps Srikant Kalyani (23) and Syed Saba Karim (11) were taking Bengal towards their first target of five points for the first innings lead.