Bihar recover after poor start

Bihar recovered after a poor start to make 258 on the opening day of their East Zone Ranji Trophy league match against Assam at the Keenan stadium in Jamshedpur on Wednesday. At stumps Assam reply were five for no loss off three overs.

Opting to bat, Bihar lost three wickets for 24. All the wickets were taken by medium pacer J Zaman who dismissed D Chakravarthy, A Hashmi and Rajiv Kumar in successive overs. The recovery process was initiated by opener N Ranjan (58) and skipper Sunil Kumar (68) who added 104 runs for the fourth wicket off 32.4 overs. While Ranjan faced 141 balls and hit seven fours, Sunil Kumar faced 170 balls and also hit seven of them to the ropes. Sunil Kumar and Sandeep Roy (24) continued the recovery process by putting on 55 runs off 19.3 overs for the fifth wicket. The rest of the batsmen, with the exception of wicketkeeper MS Dhoni, however came to grief against O Singh who took four of the last six wickets to fall and finished with five for 81 off 28.3 overs. Dhoni scored a valuable 40 off 62 balls with the help of eight fours. Zaman finished with three for 45.