Parth Bhut, who came in to bat at number nine, scored an unbeaten century as Saurashtra recovered from a poor start to post 303 in their first innings on the opening day against Punjab in the Ranji Trophy quarter-final clash on Tuesday. When Bhut came to the crease, Saurashtra’s score was 147 for seven and the team also lost the eighth wicket on the same score. The left-arm spinner did wonders with the bat, scoring an unbeaten 111 in 155 balls with the help of 11 fours and four sixes, besides adding 156 runs with the last two batsmen to take the team to a respectable score.
Bhut shared 61 runs for the ninth wicket with pacer Chetan Sakaria (22) and 95 runs for the 10th wicket with Yuvraj Singh Dodia. For Punjab, spin bowler Mayank Markande took four wickets while fast bowler Baltej Singh took three wickets. Give it to the experienced Siddharth Kaul while Naman Dheer gets a breakthrough. In response, Punjab scored three runs without loss in their first innings till stumps. Earlier, Saurashtra’s decision to elect to bat after winning the toss was not correct.
Opener Snell Patel (70) kept one end in check while the other end kept the team losing wickets. Snell hit 11 fours in his 131-ball innings. In the very first over of the innings, wicketkeeper Harvik Desai was shown the way to the pavilion by Baltej without opening the account. Vishwaraj Jadeja (28) and Sheldon Jackson (18) could not convert good starts into big innings.
