Winning start for Railways

Railways got off to a winning start in the CricInfo Rani Jhansi tournament at the AC Tech ground in Chennai today. The spin troika of Rupanjali Shastri, Deepa Kulkarni and Neetu David ran rings around the Central Zone batswomen to restrict them to 116 in the morning session. After losing two relatively early wickets in reply, a durable third wicket association between Rajini Venugopal and Hemlata Kala put Railways on the victory trail and they closed out the match by six wickets with almost ten overs to spare.

In a change of tactics , Central Zone decided to bat first on winning the toss rather than chase a target which they had successfully accomplished yesterday. The dependable combination of Bharati Varma and Priyanka Sailey opened the innings . Priyanka was clearly being the more flamboyant of the two while Bharati played the anchor role. The strategy seemed to be to keep wickets in hand by waiting for the bad balls and in the meantime, taking the singles aggressively. The running between the wickets was not the most professional, a little more method in the madness would have been desirable, but they managed to avert tragedy.

The score had mounted to 34 in 13 overs when spin made its first appearance in the form of Rupanjali Shastri's off breaks. In the next over the left arm orthodox tweakers of Neetu David were introduced. She kept Bharati quiet for four balls before the latter lost patience, going for a heave against the spin to be bowled. Chitra Vajpayee tried another cross batted swipe off Rupanjali, a la Bharati, and was lucky to see it miss the stumps. But the writing was on the wall and she tried to cut one outside off in the same over only to nick one through to the keeper. She was gone for a fourth ball duck.

This started a procession as Rupanjali then packed off Arundhati and Preeti Dudhe in her next two overs, also for ducks, to put Central in dire straits at 41/4 in the 20th over. Priyanka had watched the bloodletting from the other end and she now got a partner in Rahul Singh, coming in at No.6, who seemed to possess the same steely nerves. Neetu gave the ball plenty of air, inviting Priyanka to come to the pitch of the ball, and the latter picked up the gauntlet to loft her for two fours to wide long on. A fielder was quietly put back on the long on boundary and Priyanka just could not resist launching herself into another flighted delivery and holed out to her. If ever an object lesson was delivered in how to buy your wicket, this was it. Priyanka had made 24 (63 balls, 3 fours), which remained the top score in the innings.

Skipper Deepa Kulkarni, another left arm spinner, had put herself on by now and Rahul, after striking three boundaries, gave a tame catch to Balvir Kaur at midoff. Varsha Raphael played some attractive strokes en route to 21 from 31 balls and after she was bowled by Deepa at 90, captain Leena Muley and Bindeshwari Goel delayed the inevitable. The innings finally folded up for 116 in the 48th over, with Rupanjali and Deepa both finishing with 3/21 from 10 overs, while Neetu bagged 2/27 from ten.

Railways began slowly with openers Rajini Sharma and Reshma Gandhi just getting their eye in and not trying to do anything daring. Rajini was especially strong on the off side as she stroked two boundaries through the covers off Central captain Leena Muley. Off break bowler Varsha Raphael had opened the innings from the pavilion end rather than the more conventional medium pace option of Neetu Singh. In the tenth over Reshma came into her elements with a boundary to square leg and a fluent drive to wide long off that was stopped just inside the rope. But in the same over, Varsha flattened Rajini's off stump as she played back to one that kept a trifle low. She was then surprisingly taken off and left arm spinner Preeti Dimri, who was not played yesterday, came into the attack while at the other end, Preeti Dudhe, the bespectacled leg spinner was given a fling. Dimri has a nice easy action with economy of effort and struck by drawing Reshma into a drive and beating her in the flight. Keeper Arundhati had the bails off in one quick motion and Railways were down to 31/2 in the 14th over.

This brought two relatively new batswomen to the crease in Rajini Venugopal and Hemlata Kala. They gave the bowling a wide berth at first as the two Preetis despairingly attempted to make further inroads. Dudhe was getting good bounce and Arundhati collected one at chest height that just beat the outside edge of Hemlata's bat. The latter had another close call as she drove Dudhe on the up to cover but it just failed to carry to the lunging fieldswoman who took it on the half volley. But the longer these two stayed at the wicket, the more emboldened they became.

The running between the wickets was a class higher than anything else seen in the match, with the ones being converted into twos with cheek. The same could not be said of the Central fielding though which was rather unedifying at times. The run stand was finally broken in the 35th over by left arm spinner Rahul Singh when Hemlata stepped out to cart her away but played inside the line to leave her wickets in a mess. Two balls later Balvir Kaur was bowled in identical fashion to leave the score at 93 /4 and Railways were making a struggle out of an ordinary task. Captain Deepa Kulkarni brought some composure to the proceedings and with Rajini continuing to fire away at the other end, the win was finally sealed in the 41st over, with the latter unbeaten on 42 (87 balls, 4 fours).