Bengal spinners peg back Assam

Half centuries from Parag Das and Rajesh Bora helped Assam to a useful 272/9 on the opening day of their East Zone Ranji Trophy clash against Bengal at Maligaon. Assam are playing their first match while Bengal are fresh from an innings victory over Tripura last week.

Assam skipper Zakaria Zuffri won the toss and elected to take strike. The right-left opening combination of Parag Das and Subhrajit Saikia established an early dominance by piling on 127 first up. Bengal however regained the initiative by grabbing four wickets in the space of 13 runs. Off spinner Saurashish Lahiri, a trainee at the National Cricket Academy, collected three of those scalps while veteran left arm spinner Utpal Chatterjee chipped in by removing Das for 68 (147 balls, 13 fours), which turned out to be the topscore for Assam.

Rajesh Bora resurrected the innings with a brisk 55 (73 balls, 6 fours, 2 sixes) and built two useful partnerships in the middle order to help Assam to 257/5. Another collapse followed as four wickets tumbled for 15 before stumps were drawn three overs early due to bad light. The last wicket pair of Sunil Subramaniam and Javed Zaman will resume battle on Monday. Lahiri finished with 4/65 while Chatterjee returned figures of 3/50.