Kerala claim first day's honours

The Kerala Under-22 team will be happy to end the first day at 18 for no loss off 9 overs after dismissing Hyderabad for 263. Earlier, Santosh Yadav of Hyderabad decided to bat on winning the toss in the P Ramachandra Rao Trophy encounter in Hyderabad.

Tinu Yohanan and Prashanth Chandran started tidily as the latter got rid of Ibrahim Khaleel early. Anirudh Singh joined Aditya Agarwal and put on 91 for the second wicket when Prashanth Chandran struck again and dismissed the opener for a very well made 69 with 10 hits to the ropes and one over the rope. Hyderabad went to Lunch at 120 for 2.

Then came the session for Hyderabad where they lost their way, losing 5 wickets for a mere 81 runs. Left arm spinner Srikumar Nair was the wrecker-in-chief in that period and ended up with 4 for 58 off 21 overs. Even in this session the Hyderabadi wicketkeeper Vishal kept scoring freely. He added 51 runs with Mohammed Ghouse (4) for the 8th wicket and seemed to be in a good position.

Skipper Srikumar Nair decided to give another chance to Shaju Mathen who was very expensive in his first spell of 4 overs. Luckily for Kerala, Shaju Mathen ended up with 3 for 6 off 3.4 overs in his second spell. Vishal too fell to him for a sparkling 81 (9 fours, 3 sixers). After Vishal's fall Shaju needed 2 more balls to clean up Inder Sekhar Reddy giving a chance for his openers to have a bat in the evening.