Bengal fritter early advantage

Bengal let go the early advantage of skittling out Tamil Nadu for 218 and were tottering at 32 for 3 on the opening day of the Ranji Trophy match at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on Tuesday.

Bengal won the toss and elected to field on a green top and Ganguly immediately got into the act with Ranadeb Bose to reduce the visitors to 40 for 3, with Ganguly claiming the wickets of S Sriram and S Badrinath.

It was the Tamil Nadu middle order, led by Hemang Badani (67), R Satish (22) and D Kaarthick(21) that lent some stability to the innings with two healthy partnerships among the three for the fifth and sixth wickets.

Thereafter, Bengal struck again removing the last four Tamil Nadu batsmen for 41 runs.

But it was Ganguly who stole the limelight. He was debarred from bowling in the first innings and then warned for returning late to the field after the game was suspended due to bad light.

Ganguly received the third warning for straying into the danger zone while bowling the 58th over of the match from the Club House end. His figures at that time read 15.5-5-62-3.

But this was not the end of it. When Bengal batted he again ran into troubled waters. At the end of the 14th over the umpires offered light to the Bengal batsmen and they took it. But as light improved the umpires decided to resume the match after eight minutes, but Ganguly took his time to walk out, resulting in some inordinate delay.

By then the light had again deteriorated and though both Ganguly and Jhunjhunwala were in the middle the game had to be called off for the day, eight overs short.

Later umpire Hariharan told UNI, ''Ganguly came in after quite sometime and we advised him strongly that he should not have taken so much time.''

Scorecard

Tamil Nadu (1st innings):
S Sriram lbw Ganguly 5
K Vasudevadas b Bose 5
S Badrinath lbw Ganguly 17
S Sharath c Ganguly b Paul 8
H Badani c Suphajit Paul b Lahiri 67
R Sathish lbw Ganguly 22
K D Karthik c Jhunjhunwala b Dinda 21
M Shrinivas c Dasgupta b Dinda 16
A Kapoor c & b Bose 25
V Mahesh not out 14
R Jesuraj c Dasgupta b Bose 0
Extras: (lb 12, nb 6) 18
Total: (all out, 65.3 overs, 307 mins) 218

Fall of wickets: 1-10, 2-23, 3-40, 4-50, 5-98, 6-140, 7-177, 8-198, 9-214, 10-218.

Bowling: Paul 20-3-47-1, Bose 14.3-5-43-3, Ganguly 15.5-2-62-3 (6nb), Dinda 11-2-37-2, Lahiri 4-1-17-1, Gavaskar 0.1-0-0-0.

Bengal (1st innings):
A Das b Jesuraj 0
S Paul b Jesuraj 3
A Jhunjhunwala not out 16
R Gavaskar c Karthik b Jesuraj 0
S C Ganguly not out 8.
Extras: (b 4, nb 1) 5
Total: (3 wickets, 14 overs) 32

To bat: D Dasgupta, L R Shukla, S S Lahiri, S S Paul, R Bose, A Dinda.

Fall of wickets: 1-0, 2-16, 3-20.

Bowling: Jesuraj 7-5-2-3, Shrinivas 2-1-8-0 (1nb), Mahesh 3-0-15-0, Kapoor 2-0-3-0.