Having already retained the title by virtue of their huge first innings lead, defending champions Karnataka are now looking to post an outright win over Tamil Nadu after reducing them to 113 for three in their second essay on day four of Ranji Trophy final here on Wednesday.
Karnataka posted a massive total of 762 in their first innings after bundling out Tamil Nadu for a paltry 134. At stumps on the penultimate day, Tamil Nadu were struggling in their second innings, still trailing the title holders by a huge 515 runs with seven wickets remaining.
Now even if the match ends in a draw, which is one of the only two possible outcomes, Karnataka would retained the Ranji Trophy title at the Wankhede stadium here.
Resuming at an overnight score of 618 for seven, Karnataka added 144 more runs to their total. The defending champions lost their triple centurion Karun Nair (328) in the first session but skipper R Vinay Kumar (105) slammed his second Ranji century to guide the team to a mammoth 762.
Vinay Kumar, who resumed on 41, batted patiently during his 319-ball innings and struck 10 fours and three sixes.
Nair, who had been batting since the first day, although made a brilliant 328, couldn’t surpass his teammate K l Rahul’s 337 to be the highest run-scorer for Karnataka.
Nair’s marathon 14-and-a-half hour knock came to an end 57 minutes into the day when he was trapped leg before by Vijay Shankar. The triple centurion’s stay at the crease yielded 46 fours and a six while sharing a 142-run partnership with Vinay Kumar.
14 minutes after lunch it was all over for Karnataka with Sharath being the last wicket. Tamil Nadu’s second innings started on a disastrous note, as they lost skipper Abhinav Mukund (13) with just 30 runs on board.
Brief score
Tamil Nadu: 134 & 113/3 (Baba Aparajith 36*; Shreyas Gopal 2/36) trail Karnataka: 762 (Karun Nair 328, K l Rahul 188, R Vinay Kumar 105 not out, laxmipathy Balaji 3/120, Malolan Rangarajan 3/183) by 515 runs.