Railways get useful practice before title clash

Aided by a sedate 74 by Rajini Venugopal, Indian Railways completed a one sided eight wicket win over East Zone at the AC Tech ground in the CricInfo Rani Jhansi Trophy Women's tournament in Chennai on Friday. The match provided Railways with an an excellent opportunity to have some valuable match practice before they take on arch rivals Air India in the title clash on Saturday.

After restricting East to 146, Railways stared the run chase with a little hiccup when Rajini Sharma was caught behind in the very first over off Jhulan. Rajini Venugopal (74 runs off 107 balls) joined Balbir Kaur and the two added 28 runs in 5.2 overs for the second wicket. Balbir (7) was run out while trying to steal a single. Hemalatha (42 runs off 88 balls) then joined Rajini. With two early wickets having fallen as a result of misjudgements, Rajni and Hemalatha put their heads down and made sure of a Railways win.

The pair moved steadily towards the target with a sedate partnership which saw them capitalizing on some frequent lapses in the field. Boundaries were far and few between since the two preferred to pick up the runs by placing the ball into the gaps. The stand flourished and with the East bowling not upto the mark, the two were able to rotate the strike and kept the score ticking.

Rajini in particular looked at ease against the spin attack of Sabari, Seema and Saswati. She made some crisp drives on both sides of the wicket. Rajini reached her half-century in 69 balls with the help of six boundaries. Then the two of them consolidated and helped the team to close out the match in 35.2 overs with a 155 run unbroken stand off 171 balls.

Earlier, winning the toss, East Zone openers Neetu and Kavitha (58 runs off 131 balls) failed to give a good start. Neetu was caught behind off Sunita when trying to go for an ambitious slash behind point. This brought Chandrabarti (29 runs off 106 balls) to the crease. Both Chandrabarti and Kavitha resumed from where they had left off yesterday when they had shared a century stand against South Zone. They showed good understanding in picking up the runs and rotated the strike judiciously.

But after the first drinks, the two spinners Rupanjali and Neetu David started to contain the two. Operating from the pavilion end, Neetu especially made use of the uneven bounce and started to trouble the two batswomen. She managed to find the nick of Kavitha's bat but Rupanjali at gully dropped a simple chance. From the 20th over onwards, both Chandrabarti and Kavitha were tied down by some good bowling from the spinners. They were not able to get the ball away for runs and the scoring rate dropped appreciably.

Neetu and Deepa Kulkarni, operating in tandem, hardly gave anything away through to the 40th over. From the 20th to the 40th over, East compiled only 40 runs. After a spell of 10 overs for nine runs with six maidens from Neetu, East were pegged back by the fact that there was not enough runs on the board and they were already in the last ten overs.

The start of the 41st over saw Chandrabarti run out in trying to get on with the scoring. This brought Rumeli to the crease. Kavitha in the meantime reached her second consecutive half century of the tournament. But her innings was cut short by a needless run out when she failed to reach the crease in trying to go for a non-existent single. Then Rumeli was bowled by Deepa while tring to punch the ball off the back foot. Geeta Samantrai and Jhulan took the score to 136 in the 50th over, when the latter was run out. At the end of their 50 overs, East managed to score only 146 for the loss of five wickets, mainly because of some good bowling by the Railways spin bowlers.