The Karnail Singh Stadium pitch continues to make headlines for wrong reasons as the Ranji Trophy Group D match between Punjab and Railways resumed here on Thursday. Match referee Yovraj Singh, after a long discussion with the captains of both the teams, Mandeep Singh and Karn Sharma, decided to start the match at 2 pm. This would make the match a two-day affair in which Punjab decided to bowl. Railways batsmen were finding it difficult to bat and they lost five wickets for 59 runs in 32 overs.
Over the years, the Karnail Singh Stadium has been notorious for its poor pitch and has been banned on several occasions. It can be understood that as soon as the BCCI (Indian Cricket Board) receives the report of the on-field umpire and match referee, it can act on it. Siddharth Kaul’s ball also hit the helmet of Railways’ debutant opener Rahul Rawat (12 runs). Siddharth took three wickets for 19 runs in his 12 overs. Some balls stayed below the knee while some were bouncing a lot. The umpires were seen having a long discussion in the fourth over of the innings but the match went on and the Railways team stood till stumps.
Wicket-keeper batsman Upendra Yadav 10 and captain Karn Sharma were present at the crease after scoring one run. The match was suspended on Wednesday after match officials deemed the pitch dangerous and unfit for play but it was resumed on an adjacent pitch. The match officials decided that the two-day match from Thursday would be played on the new pitch. By the time the match officials decided to stop the match, 24 wickets had fallen in just 103 overs, of which 20 went to the fast bowlers. At this time Punjab had scored 18 runs for four wickets in the second innings. The team took a 12-run lead over Railways in the first innings.
In Ahmedabad, home team Gujarat beat Jammu and Kashmir by nine wickets thanks to 14 wickets from left-arm spinner Siddharth Desai. The first win of the season lifted Gujarat (seven points) to second place behind defending champions Madhya Pradesh (14 runs). Desai took eight wickets for 66 runs in the second innings and six wickets for 38 runs in the first innings. In Nagpur, Ganesh Satish (142 not out) scored a century and Akshay Wadkar (88) scored a half-century as Vidarbha posted 348 for six in their second innings to take their overall lead to 313 against Tripura. Vidarbha had scored 264 runs in the first innings, in response to which Tripura had scored 299 runs to take the first innings lead.
