Irani Trophy match between Rest of India and Saurashtra has started in Rajkot from Saturday. In this 5-day match, Rest of India won the toss and elected to bowl first. The pair of Mukesh Kumar and Kuldeep Sen broke the back of Saurashtra’s batting in just a few overs. Saurashtra’s first 4 wickets fell within just 25 balls. Openers Harvik Desai (0), Snell Patel (4), Chirag Jani (0) and Cheteshwar Pujara (1) were dismissed cheaply by the hostile Rest of India fast bowlers .
Out of this, three wickets were taken by Bengal pacer Mukesh Kumar and one Kuldeep Sen . Saurashtra’s team could not recover from the four blows in the first 4 overs and the innings was completely shattered. 7 batsmen of Saurashtra could not even touch the double figure and got more runs as extra than 6 batsmen.
By the score of 30 runs, half the team had returned to the pavilion. After this Dharmendrasinh Jadeja tried hard to take Saurashtra’s score beyond 100. But, he could not succeed in this. Dharmendra Singh got out after scoring 28 runs. Saurashtra’s innings also ended as soon as he got out. Saurashtra’s team could not even play the entire 25 overs and was all out after scoring 98 runs in 24.5 overs.
Mukesh Kumar took 4 wickets for 23 runs in 10 overs. He also bowled 4 over maidens. Kuldeep Sen and Umran Malik got 3 successes each and Umran bowled some scorching yorkers to dismantle the Saurashtra middle order . Apart from Dharmendra Singh, Arpit Vasavada scored 22 runs for Saurashtra.
In reply a fluent unbeaten 125 by the prolific Sarfaraz Khan and 62 not out by Hanuma Vihari steered Rest of India to a strong position of 205/3 at the end of day one after Jaydev Unadkat and Chetan Sakariya made early inroads into Rest of India top order dismissing the top 3 batters for just 18 .
Saurashtra now has a huge fightback in their hands to prevent a huge defeat