Jharkhand top table with five-wicket win
A round-up of the fourth day of Ranji Trophy games from Group B
ESPNcricinfo staff
02-Dec-2016
File photo - Rahul Shukla took three wickets on the fourth morning • PTI
Seamers Rahul Shukla and Ashish Kumar combined to knock Assam over for 299 on the fourth morning before Jharkhand chased down the target of 110 with five wickets in hand. The win pushed Jharkhand to first place on the Group B points table with 32 from seven matches. Resuming on 269 for 5, Assam lost Arun Karthik in the second over of the morning. Overnight batsman Sibsankar Roy was subsequently dismissed for 86 as Assam lost their last five wickets for 30 runs. Shukla returned figures of 3 for 74, while Kumar chipped in with two wickets.
Coming in at 52 for 3, Ishank Jaggi quelled any hope of an Assam fightback with a 15-ball 34 that included four fours and two sixes. Arup Das claimed 3 for 49.
Karnataka offspinner K Gowtham ripped out four wickets and gave Saurashtra a bit of a scare but couldn't prevent them from wrapping up a four-wicket win in Patiala and climbing off the bottom of the table. Karnataka began the day 168 for 5 - effectively 9 for 5 - in their second innings, and their last five wickets only managed to add 48 to their total as the left-arm spinner Jay Chauhan finished with 4 for 71 to end with match figures of 7 for 123 on debut.
Apart from two overs from their captain Vinay Kumar, Karnataka used spin throughout in a desperate bid to defend a target of 58. Gowtham took four wickets in 7.4 overs and left-arm spinner Abrar Kazi two in eight, before Arpit Vasavada and first-innings centurion Prerak Mankad steered Saurashtra home with an unbroken 22-run stand for the seventh wicket. The defeat meant Karnataka slipped to second place, two points behind Jharkhand.
Only 19 overs were possible on another rain-hit day at the SSN College of Engineering ground in Chennai, where Delhi picked up three points for their first-innings lead against Vidarbha. With day three washed out completely, Delhi declared on their day-two total of 250 for 8, with a lead of 67. Vidarbha lost three wickets in getting to 37, with seamers Sumit Narwal, Navdeep Saini and Vikas Tokas picking up one each.