Vineet Saxena came up with a gritty 65 as Railways crawled to 191 for 5 in their first innings on the opening day of the four-day Ranji Trophy Elite Group A match against Bengal in Kolkata on Tuesday.

Electing to bat first, Railways lost their two openers - captain Sanjay Bangar (21) and Amit Pagnis (9) - early, before Saxena and Shreyas Khanolkar (35) steadied the innings with a 80-run third wicket partnership on a docile track at the Eden Gardens.

Yere Goud (18 batting) and Raja Ali (8 batting) were in the middle at draw of stumps as the visitors batted painstakingly slow, scoring marginally above two runs per over.

• Ranji Trophy 2005-06

Bangar's lacklustre run with the bat continued as he departed after a 52-minute stay when he was adjudged leg before to an incoming delivery from pacer Shib Shankar Paul, who returned figures of 2 for 39.

Laxmi Ratan Shukla got rid of Pagnis in the next over, as Railways seemed to be in trouble at 30 for 2.

However, Saxena (251b, 286m, 7x4) and Khanolkar saw the hosts to 88 without any further loss at lunch, and took the score past the 100 mark in the seventh over of the post-lunch session.

Paul finally got rid of Khanolkar, while JP Yadav (15) was dismissed by Sourasish Lahiri.

Saxena reached his half-century in 222 minutes soon after the tea break, and his innings came to an end 22 minutes before close when Ranadeb Bose trapped him leg before..

Scorecard

Railways 1st innings
S Bangar lbw b Paul 21
A Pagnis c Tiwary b Shukla 9
V Saxena lbw b Bose 65
S Khanolkar c Dasgupta b Paul 35
JP Yadav c Arindam Das b Lahiri 15
Y Goud not out 18
Raja Ali not out 8
Extras (b 2, lb 7, nb 11) 20
Total (5 wickets, 91 overs) 191

Fall of wickets: 1-30, 2-30, 3-110, 4-139, 5-181

Bowling: Paul 23 7 39 2, Bose 20 9 44 1, Shukla 10 3 26 1 (4nb), Lahiri 25 7 58 1 (5nb), Singh 13 6 15 0 (2nb)