Chougule stands tall as bowlers rule the roost

An unbeaten 97 in difficult circumstances by DA Chougule and some good bowling performances by both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka which resulted in as many as 17 wickets falling was the feature of the first day of the Cooch Behar Trophy South Zone league match at the IIT- Chemplast ground in Chennai on Thursday. Tamil Nadu struggled to 82 for seven at stumps after bowling out Karnataka for 159 in their first innings.

Tamil Nadu made a sedate start in their first innings with openers R Sainath (13) and K Vasudeva Das (18) putting on 33 runs in 11.4 overs. Vasudeva Das was the first to go when he offered a return catch to Dharmichand. Off the very next ball, R Prasanna departed, giving a catch to Chougule. Then Aditya Srikkanth (20) and Sainath took the score to 46, before the latter was out, giving a catch back to the bowler Dharmichand.

Srikkanth was joined by E Suresh (8) for a brief period. The two took the score to 63, when Suresh gave a catch to BMV Uthappa off SV Lasarus. Three balls later, Srikkanth became the fourth victim of Dharmichand when he was picked up by AK Bafna. Tamil Nadu then were in a spot of bother when Lazarus dismissed T Dushyanth (3) and Dharmichand sent back skipper Vidyuth Sivaramakrishnan (8) with 74 on the board. Tamil Nadu ended an eventful day at 82 with L Balaji (2) and KKD Karthik (6) at the crease. Dharmichand was the wrecker-inchief for Karnataka with figures of five for 30 in his 14 overs.

In the morning, disaster struck early for Karnataka when they elected to bat. Opener HTS Rao (0) was bowled off the fourth ball of the day by T Balaji. The other opener DV Krishna did not last long and departed in the sixth over when he was dismissed in much the similar way as his partner. Then BMV Uthappa (23) and DA Chougule joined together to bring up the fifty for Karnataka.

Then with the score at 59, Vidyuth struck the vital blow by having Uthappa caught behind by Kartik. The very next ball saw skipper C Raghu returning to the pavilion after being out in a similar manner. Ten runs later Stuart Binny was lured out of the crease by Vidyuth to be stumped by Kartik. The next over from Vidyuth saw AK Bafna returning to the pavilion after being stumped by Kartik.

The next over by Balaji saw the departure of Dharmichand (0). Then Vidyuth came back to pick up the wicket of Lazarus. At the other end Chougule was waging a lone battle. He reached his half century after batting for about 2-1/2 hours. He kept up the scoring rate with neat hits to the fence interspersed with some solid batsmanship even as he lost his partners at regular intervals. But Chougule found unlikely partners in the Karnataka tail and a 38-run ninth wicket partnership ensued between him and G Sendhil Kumar (7) which made sure of Karnataka going past the 100 run mark. Then NT Pinto (3) gave him company to help Karnataka end the first innings at 159. Chougule batted 208 minutes, faced 163 balls and hit 10 fours and a six. Vidyuth was the most successful bowler. The left arm spinner ended the innings with figures of 5 for 36 in his 20 overs.