Playing only his second first-class match, young Nitin Bhille scored a century and added 218 runs for the second wicket with Shivakant Shukla before Uttar Pradesh bowlers made a comeback restricting Railways to 282/5 in a Ranji Trophy match.
Published: Dec 06, 2011, 10:20 PM (IST)
Edited: Dec 06, 2011, 10:20 PM (IST)
Piyush Chawla took two wickets for 81 runs © Getty Images
Ghaziabad: Dec 6, 2011
Playing only his second first-class match, young Nitin Bhille scored a century and added 218 runs for the second wicket with Shivakant Shukla before Uttar Pradesh bowlers made a comeback restricting Railways to 282/5 in a Ranji Trophy match.
Bhille (123, 230 balls, 15×4, 1×6) showed a lot of maturity while former UP opener Shivakant missed three-figure mark by only two runs as he played a rank bad shot off leggie Piysuh Chawla to be caught by skipper Rudra Pratap Singh at slips. Shivakant 14 boundaries and a six in his 213-ball knock.
UP captain RP decided to field first but there wasn’t much in the strip. Railways dropped out of form veteran Yere Goud and inducted veteran spinner Murali Karthik who was sent to open the batting. Karthik attacked the bowlers scoring a quickfire 27 off 34 balls with the help of five fours before rival skipper dismissed him caught by Praveen Gupta.
Bhille, who has played his junior cricket for Karnataka showed lot of maturity as he repeatedly punished the loose balls. Shivakant also got into the groove and started playing his shots. The UP attack lacked penetration and the Railways duo didn’t find any difficulty in negotiating with the attack.
Birthday boy RP who bowled 11 overs in two spells in the morning session didn’t come back till the final hour which was pretty baffling.
The post tea-session started with Shivakant hitting three consecutive boundaries off Chawla to jump from 83 to 95.
However, Shivakant should curse his luck as he was out to a bad delivery. .Skipper Sanjay Bangar (0) may have been a bit stiff due to a four and half hours wait in the pavilion and gave a tame catch to short mid-wicket fielder Gupta off yet another long hop from Chawla.
The dangerous Bhille was finally out when he flashed hard at a Bhuvenshwar Kumar delivery to be brilliantly caught by Arish Alam at gully. Bhuvenshwar, then got one to move away as Prashant Awasthi (15) was caught by former India colts wicketkeeper Zahid Ali. RP has been warned by the umpires for overstepping into the danger zone. (PTI)
Brief Scores: Railways 282/5 (Nitin Bhille 123, SS Shukla 98, Bhuvenshwar Kumar 2/50, Piyush Chawla 2/81) vs UP.
