Assam-Gujarat Plate Division Ranji match

Gujarat well placed against Assam in Ranji Trophy Day One

Ahmedabad, Nov 3:

Despite scoring just 228 runs in the first innings, hosts Gujarat were comfortably placed after sending back four top order batsmen of the visiting Assam team for just 56 runs on the first day of four-day plate division Ranji Trophy match at the Sardar Patel Guajrat Stadium at Motera near here today.

Gujarat, who are aiming to regain their berth in the Elite Group after being relegated to plate division on the basis of their dismal performance in last Ranji season of 2006-07, got into a comfortable position, thanks to their main strike bowler Siddharth Trivedi, who missed the last season due to injury.

The speedster took two early wickets to bring his side back into the game. Trivedi struck in the first over and claimed the wicket of S Bhagawati, Assam's opener, who was brilliantly caught by wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel when team's total was just two runs and his individual contribution was just one run.

As if this was not enough, second opener S Das also made an early exit, at the same score, when he was caught by Niraj Patel off the bowling of Makda.

At this point, Assam's scorecard read two runs for the loss of two wickets. Before the close of play, the visitors lost two more wickets -- N H Bordoloi, who was the second victim of Makda, and Tarjinder Singh, who fell prey to T K Patel. Bordoloi and Singh
made 13 and 19 runs respectively.

When stumps were drawn, the visitors were four down for 56 runs, with S Ramesh and S Sharath unbeaten on individual scores of 16 and zero respectively.

Earlier, Gujarat, who were asked to bat first by rival captain S Sharath, made a slow but steady start. However, debutant opener Hem Joshipura returned to pavilion when he was adjudged LBW off the bowling of S Suresh. His individual score was 14, while his team's total was 23. The other opener, Nilesh Modi, also made early exit by scoring just 17 runs.

Then skipper Parthiv Patel, along with Niraj Patel, gave some steadiness to Gujarat's batting. But at the team total of 88, Parthiv was caught by Singh off Goswami's bowling.
He made a personal contribution of 49 runs, while Niraj scored 31.

Other batsman who played significant innings for the hosts was Digant Popat who hit 63 runs. He was the only bastman to keep one end intact while witnessing the fall of wickets at the other end as Gujarat lost their four bastmen -- number seven to 10 – for just eight runs.

For the visitors, the most successful bowlers were K Das and S Suresh, who took four wickets each for 73 and 46 runs respectively. D S Goswami and A Konwar took one wicket each.

Earlier, both the teams introduced new faces in their squads. Wicket-keeper Rajdeep Das and K Das got their debuts while Gujarat included N Raval in their team.

The Teams:
Gujarat: N D Modi, H R Joshipura, Parthiv Patel (wk; captain), A M Makda, N Raval, M H Parmar, N K Patel, T K Patel, B D Thaker, S K Trivedi

Assam: S Sharath (captain), Rajdeep Das (wk), S Bhagawati, NH Bordoloi, K Das, S Das, DS Goswami, A Konwar, S Ramesh, S Suresh , Tarjinder Singh

Umpires: S L Dendapani, V N Kulkarni
Match Referee: S Chaturvedi