Laxman stars in Hyderabad's sound reply

Hyderabad: Resuming at the overnight score of 300 for 5, both the batsmen continued from where they left off yesterday and were looking good for a huge score. Until Venugopala Rao was brilliantly taken by the lone slip in M V Sridhar diving full stretch to his left and picking the dipping ball off the steady bowling of Laxman in his first over of the day.

In two minutes over an hour today Venu added 23 more to his overnight 72 and added 55 runs for the 6th wicket in 76 minutes off 18.3 overs. Vatekar joined Sai [27] and tried to speed up the scoring rate. He added 28 runs in 50 minutes with Sai before he was out caught and bowled by Venkatapathi Raju when he tried to pull him over mid wicket only to top edge high up in the air.

From 371 for 6 at one stage, Andhra lost its last four wickets for the addition of only 9 runs in 10 overs. Venkatapathi Raju claimed three of them to return overall bowling figures of 40.5-11-105-5, including the wicket of K S T Sai who lofted him for 6 over long-off before he was last man out for a well made 49 runs.

This is the 13th time that Raju has taken 5 or more wickets in an innings. Playing his 64th Ranji Trophy Match, Raju took his aggregate tally to 255 wickets, behind the Hyderabad coach Arshad Ayub [286] and his bowling partner Kanwaljeet Singh [258]. The other two wickets to fall today were claimed by Laxman and Kanwaljeet. Andhra's innings folded 3 minutes before lunch on day-2.

Hyderabad's opening pair of Daniel Manohar and V V S Laxman continued from where they left off in the Subbaiah Pillai [ One-Day ] game on Sunday in compiling a century stand for the first wicket. First it was Laxman to reach 50 (95 m, 61 b, 9x4) out of the side's total of 79, while Daniel followed (181 m, 141b, 4x4s) out of a total of 143. Laxman's second century in successive matches came in 217 minutes from 157 balls and included 14 fours.

Laxman's last seven innings have fetched him 5 centuries, the sequence being 219 against Baroda, 110 & 193 against Delhi, 84 & 28 against M.P., 131 against Goa and 100 [batting] against Andhra. In all he has 12 centuries in 30 matches and 47 innings. Andhra tried as many as six bowlers to get a break-through. Left armer Ram Kishan played a dual role by bowling 11 overs of medium pace followed by 15 overs of spin.

Partnering him was Madhukar who went for 31 runs in his first spell of 4 overs, 27 of which were scored by Laxman with 6 fours. Madhukar was replaced by young Ranganath who managed to restrict to some extent the run flow, bowling in tandem with Ram Kishan.