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Barnstorming Bengal in semis, Rlys history
Friday the 13th turned out to be Good Friday for Bengal. The sedate passages of play on the first three days made way for a cliffhanger on Day Four. And at the end of it all, the team that barely managed to save relegation last year snatched a semi-final berth among the Elites.
Friday the 13th turned out to be Good Friday for Bengal. The sedate passages of play on the first three days made way for a cliffhanger on Day Four. And at the end of it all, the team that barely managed to save relegation last year snatched a semi-final berth among the Elites.
Defending champions Railways were relegated when Manoj Tewari hit Murali Kartik to the long-off fence. Bengal still had a ball to spare and five wickets in hand. They will play Baroda in the semi-final.
Nobody gave Bengal much of a chance when the draw was made. Many thought Bengal would get demoted. Few really imagined they would beat Railways outright, then Karnataka would lose to Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu not take full points from staring-atrelegation Delhi. But it all happened.
One man, Avishek Jhunjhunwala, the youngest in the playing XI in terms of experience --- this was only his third Ranji match --showed the way with a stupendous 139 off 134 balls. Another young gun, Tewari, got the nine runs required for victory in the last over, hitting the experienced Kartik twice for boundaries. A third, Subhomoy Das --- who many thought had failed to deliver on his potential --- more than just chipped in with an 88.
All these performances summed up Bengal's unthinkable run chase --- 303 in 53 overs --- on a ground as big as the Eden, on a fourth-day wicket that was getting slower, and in a format where there were no fielding restrictions.
Railways batted the whole of the first session and declared, a couple of overs after lunch, on 321-6. They added 181 runs in 35 overs on Friday, in sharp contrast to their first-day crawl. Amit Pagnis got 103 and Yere Goud 55 off 58 balls, and all the while Bengal kept pushing the field back. Towards the end, they had nine men on the rope, because there really was no other option.
Railways too tried the same tactics when the Jhunjhunwala-Das blitzkrieg was on, at a time when the hosts needed 59 of the last 10 overs with nine wickets remaining. The duo played good cricketing shots. Jhunjhunwala's cover drives scorched and his straight ones were arrows. This innings was everything that not many associate with Bengal cricket. Soon, people were recalling the hosts' relegation-saving match against Madhya Pradesh last year. Only this time, Sourav Ganguly was not there to boost morale.
That made it even more special, and the icing on the cake was that youngsters had come to the fore. Good for Bengal cricket.
The Cricket Association of Bengal officials recognised that. It announced cash awards of Rs 25,000 each for Jhunjhunwala and Das, and another Rs 1.5 lakh for the team.
