Thakare to the four as Vidarbha take control

By Patitosh Pramanik

NAGPUR, Oct 10

VIDARBHA pacer Aditya Thakare bowled lethal spells to take four Tamil Nadu wickets, three in first spell, to push them to the wall on the second day of the Ranji Trophy quarter-final at VCA Civil Lines Stadium. 

At stumps, Tamil Nadu were 159 for six, still 194 runs in deficit to Vidarbha’s first innings total of 353. Captain Sai Kishore (6) and Pradosh Paul (18) were at crease.

Thakare bowled fiercely in the afternoon accounting for Tamil Nadu’s top order and then changed his bowling end to break the dangerous looking fifth wicket partnership between Vijay Shankar (55) and Andre Siddarth (65) to escort Vidarbha back on the front foot.

Thakare gave hosts breakthrough in his first over uprooting Mohammed Ali’s stumps on his third delivery. Sai Sudharsan and N Jagadeesan tried to build up the innings but Yash Thakur took a blinder at the point region to cut short Sudharsan’s innings off the Thakare. 

Thakur timed his jump to perfection as flied to his right to take an aerial catch. An over later, there was more trouble for Tamil Nadu as Thakare’s seaming delivery found Boopathi Vaishna Kumar’s bat’s edge and Vidarbha captain-wicketkeeper Akshay Wadkar pounced it with relative ease. Medium pacer Nachiket Bhute, included in the side in place of Parth Rekhade, piled up more misery on Tamil Nadu in the next over forcing N Jagadeesan to poke his bat to an away going delivery to hand Atharva Taide a low catch at slips.

Shankar and Siddarth then steadied the rocking ship which was going southwards. The duo hit some fine boundaries and a few sixes, two of which from Shankar’s blade coming against Harsh Dubey. Siddarth also stepped out to pick boundaries from pacers and also from Dubey who bowled from the pavilion end. 

Shankar targeted Dubey and hit him for a straight six on the bowler’s first over. Wadkar immediately replaced Dubey with Bhute after three overs. In the meantime, Siddarth completed his half century with a six off Bhute straight over the pavilion.

But when it looked that Shankar and Siddarth would take Tamil Nadu closer to Vidarbha’s total, Wadkar brought Thakare from the pavilion end and the bowler gave his captain the prized wicket of Shankar caught behind. 

Thakare bowled a beautiful delivery which moved slightly away to which Shankar could not take his bat away from the line.

Dubey, bowling from the far end, then sent back the other set batter Siddarth who was caught beautifully at slips by Taide.

Earlier in the morning, Vidarbha managed to add 89 runs to their overnight score of 264 as they got all out for 353 during a seven minutes extended lunch session.

In the process Harsh Dubey (69) completed his half century with a single off Sonu Yadav. Dubey was lucky to get two lives in two successive deliveries first by wicketkeeper N Jagadeesan and then by Boopathi Vaishna Kumar at second slip, bowler being Yadav on bith the occasions. Dubey hit nine boundaries for his yet another half-century.

Karun Nair managed to add 22 more runs before he was cleaned up by Yadav with an incoming delivery. Nair missed the line completely as the bowler found enough gap between his bat 

and pad.