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Tailenders save Orissa the blushes
Tailenders Basanta Mohanty and Dhiraj Singh survived 21 deliveries to help Orissa draw their Elite Group B Ranji Trophy match against Uttar Pradesh here on Saturday.
Tailenders Basanta Mohanty and Dhiraj Singh survived 21 deliveries to help Orissa draw their Elite Group B Ranji Trophy match against Uttar Pradesh here on Saturday.
Basanta and Dhiraj joined hands at the fall of Debashish Mohanty's wicket in the 78th over.
Five and a half overs were still left in the day's play and the two had a task at hand. The duo batted out three and half overs before the captains decided to call it a day.
UP had to be content with three points on first-innings lead as even if they were to dismiss the last pair in the penultimate over, they needed a 2-over cushion for change of innings.
UP were well on target for an outright win when Piyush Chawla, RP Singh and Sudeep Tyagi shared three wickets between them. But, they found Basanta and Dhiraj tough nuts to crack at the end.
It was a bit frustrating for hosts to not register an outright win here, but credit needs to be given to bowlers, who managed to get 19 wickets on a slow and dull pitch of the Dr Akhilesh Das Gupta Stadium here in the course of the four-day contest.
UP 403; Orissa 245 and 171/9 (N Behera 36, B Samantray 44, RP Singh 3/29, S Tyagi 4/61).
