Kolkata: Bengal bounced back strong and hard from an initial jitter to end the first day’s play on a high against Goa at the Eden Gardens on Saturday.
Having lost the toss, Bengal had to come out to bat and the Goa bowlers made merry, by taking three quick wickets-Abhishek Raman (1), Sudip Chatterjee (1) and skipper Manoj Tiwary (0) with just 20 runs on the board. The home side, in all sorts of trouble, needed a partnership to get back on track and found one through Abhimanyu Easwaran and Sreevats Goswami who stitched a 59-run stand to help Bengal recover a bit.
But after Easwaran departed for 46, the visitors smelt blood as they went for the kill but a determined and strong Anustup Majumder, who didn’t have a good season with the willow so far put up a game-changing mammoth partnership of 213 runs that established Bengal’s control over the game and ensured that no more damage was done. But Goswami’s dismissal for a well-made 139 towards the end of the day was disappointing as the southpaw looked promising to get a bigger score but Writtick Chatterjee’s resistance made sure that no further wicket fell on the first day as Bengal ended on top with 305 runs for the loss of five wickets.
For the visitors, the best bowler was Amulaya Pandrekar who snared two wickets. Right-arm medium pacer Lakshaya Garg also got two wickets to his name.
Summarised scores-
Kolkata: Bengal 305/5 (Sreevats Goswami 139, Anustup Majumdar 107 n.o; Amulaya Pandrekar 2/50) vs Goa
Ranchi: Gujarat 262/4 (Samit Gohel 64, Rujul Bhatt 51 n.o; Shahbaz Nadeem 2/67) vs Jharkhand
Hyderabad: Delhi 336/5 (Himmat Singh 99, Kunal Chandela 64; Mehdi Hasan 2/88) vs Hyderabad
Delhi: Karnataka 355/6 (Mayank Agarwal 173, Manish Pandey 108; Manish Rao 2/65) vs Railways
Jaipur: Saurashtra 286/3 (Avi Barot 128, Robin Uthappa 59; Tanveer Ul-Haq 2/48) vs Rajasthan
Nagpur: Himachal Pradesh 287/6 (Sumeet Verma 66, Rishi Dhawan 57; Rajneesh Gurbani 3/90) vs Vidarbha
Amritsar: Punajb 395/2 (Anmolpreet Singh 129 n.o, Shubman Gill 129; Nitin Tanwar 1/55) vs Services
Vadodara: Baroda 254/8 (Swapnil Singh 94, Karthik Kakade 42; Jagatheesan Kousik 2/28) vs Tamil Nadu
Rohtak: Haryana 206/8 (Rajat Paliwal 45, Guntashveer Singh 40; Sandeep Warrier 3/50) vs Kerala
Indore: Madhya Pradesh 96/1 (Rajat Patidar 72, Aryaman Birla 16; Govinda Poddar 1/17) trail Odisha 147 all out (Santanu Mishra 60, Govinda Poddar 36; Chandrakant Sakure 4/42) by 51 runs
Pune: Maharashtra 64/3 (Ruturaj Gaikwad 41 n.o, Chirag Khurana 8; Pritam Das 2/32) trail Assam 279 all out (Gokul Sharma 87, Sibsankar Roy 80; Nikit Dhumal 5/94) by 215 runs
Mumbai: 77/3 (Jay Gokul Bista 43 n.o, Suryakumar Yadav 30; Rana Dutta 1/13) trail Tripura 195 all out (Manisankar Murasingh 43, Yashpal Singh 33; Akash Parkar 5/32) by 118 runs