Happiness was palpable in Delhi team’s dressing room as they registered their first win in the Ranji Trophy this season after beating Haryana by 105 runs on the fourth and final day on Sunday. The victory brought them the much needed six points to take their tally to nine from four matches.
Chasing a steep 376-run target, Haryana resumed their innings at 63 for 5 this morning and despite a gritty innings by Sachin Rana (86 not out) and cameos by Jayant Yadav (60) and Joginder Sharma (35), got out for 270 runs in 70 overs.
Ishant Sharma once again proved vital for his state team taking four wickets in the second innings to finish with a match-haul of 9 for 105 in 37 overs. He was a bit unimpressive in the first session spraying the ball all over the places. But, in the post lunch session, the lanky pacer bowled an inspiring spell of four overs in which he spent nine runs and took three wickets to clean up Haryana’s tailenders and finish the match in exactly nine overs after the lunch.
Debutant left-arm spinner Varun Sood added one more wicket to his tally on Sunday for the second innings figures of 4 for 49 in 15 overs. Medium pacer Parvinder Awana, 2 for 68, also bowled his heart out and kept troubling the batsmen from the other end but was unlucky to not get more wickets despite beating the edge consistently.
On Sunday, the match wasn’t expected to go past the lunch time since half of the Haryana team was already back in the pavilion. Though Awana provided an early breakthrough dismissing the overnight not out batsman Avi Barot in only the third over of the day, the pitch played a lot easier in comparison to last three days as Rana and Yadav batted together for 90 minutes without much difficulty to bring some worry lines on Delhi skipper Gautam Gambhir’s forehead.
Finally, Sood brought an end to the 117-run stand for the seventh wicket by getting rid of Yadav. The left-armer, who bowls with a slightly side-arm action, deceived Yadav with a tossed up delivery as the Haryana batsman, in an attempt to drive the ball to long-on, missed the line to be bowled. Haryana were 193 for 7.
Rana was then joined by Joginder and another partnership bloomed between them. They added 63 runs in 16 overs before Ishant, refreshed after the lunch break, made the old ball do the talking. First he removed Joginder with an incoming delivery which uprooted the off-stump and then removed the remaining two — skipper Harshal Patel and Sanjay Budhwar — in almost similar fashion. Gambhir was declared Man of the Match for his 153-run knock in the second innings.
Brief Scores
Delhi: 201 and 312/7 decl beat Haryana: 138 and 270 in 70 overs (Sachin Rana 86 not out, Jayant Yadav 60, Ishant Sharma 4/76, Varun Sood 4/49) by 104 runs.
Delhi 6 points; Haryana 0.