Kerala deny Tamil Nadu an outright victoy

Tamil Nadu were held to a draw by Kerala in a nail-biting contest at the ICL Gurunanak College Ground, Chennai, in the P Ramachandra Rao Trophy for the Under-22, on Saturday. The excitement came to an abrupt end as the match had to be called off due to bad pitch conditions.

Invited to bat first by Kerala, Tamil Nadu did not make an impressive start to their first innings as they lost three wickets with just 50 on the board. Tamil Nadu Ranji player Hemanth Kumar who came in as one-drop steadied the innings with a 57 run partnership with SS Viswanathan (18). R Satish came in next and played a gem of an innings of 62 (76 balls, 9 fours) helping Hemanth to add 114 for the fifth wicket. Hemanth went on to complete his brilliant century and made 136 in 233 balls, lacing his innings with eighteen hits to the ropes before being dismissed. At the end of the first day's play Tamil Nadu declared their first innings closed at 313/6 in 90 overs. MR Shrinivas and K Manoharan remained unbeaten with 37 and 20 respectively.

The second morning saw Kerala going out to bat and struggling all the way along. L Balaji (12-7-14-3) and Ram Kumar (22-9-37-4) saw that Tamil Nadu gained the first innings lead dismissing Kerala for 183 in 81.2 overs. V Girilal with a patient 60 and S Baiju with 41 were the only batsmen to make any impression. Tamil Nadu went on the offensive in their second innings with Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan who opened the innings blasting a thunderbolt of a century in 84 balls. Sivaramakrishnan remained unbeaten on 100 including 9 fours and a six as Tamil Nadu declared on 160/4 made in 22.1 overs.

Requiring 291 to win in 71 overs Kerala struggled on to 179/8 in 65.3 overs as the match was called off. There were 5.3 mandatory overs remaining in the match. S Baiju was the mainstay of the Kerala second innings remaining unbeaten on 80 (13 fours) at the close of play. Baiju and Tinu Yohannan (15) played for almost 18 overs putting on a defiant 64 for the ninth wicket. Rajat Bhatia was the pick of the bowlers finishing with the figures of 8-3-21-3. Tamil Nadu collected five points to Kerala's three.