Baroda ended the third and penultimate day of its C.K. Nayudu Trophy under-22 Elite group ‘B’ match against Tamil Nadu 150 runs behind the host with six wickets in hand at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium here on Friday.
Much of its hopes of wresting the first innings lead rest on the 18-year-old shoulders of Swapnil Singh, who followed his six-wicket haul in Tamil Nadu’s innings with a confident unfinished half-century.
Left-arm spinner Swapnil, who bats right-handed, had already compiled scores of 125 and 91 in Baroda’s two previous matches against Assam and Delhi. Here, he joined left-handed opener Jaikishen Kolsawala in a fourth-wicket stand of 74 that consumed 33.4 overs.
Swapnil struck eight fours in his 131-ball stay at the wicket, including flowing cover-drives in successive overs of off-spin from M. Prabhu and Maaruthi Raghav.
Kolsawala, meanwhile, made 50, which contained three fours and a sweetly-timed stroke over midwicket for six off left-arm spinner Aushik Srinivas, before gloving one down the leg-side off seamer L. Vignesh to the tumbling K.H. Gopinath.
The scores:
Elite group: At Chennai: Tamil Nadu 318 in 135 overs (M. Kaushik Gandhi 28, L. Suryapprakash 25, K.H. Gopinath 82, B. Vijay Rahul 27, V.Maaruthi Raghav 33, K. Sriram 35, M. Prabhu 40 not out, Swapnil Singh six for 99) vs. Baroda 168 for four in 69 overs (Jaikishen Kolsawala 50, Sailesh Solanki 30, Swapnil Singh 51 batting).
At New Delhi: Delhi 204 and 148 for five in 56 overs (Rahul Yadhav 50, G. Chhabra 34, Y. Nagar 28) vs. Railways 567 for seven decl. in 137.4 overs (Mohd. Arif 133, Boddu Amit 101, Rakesh Mishra 184, Ashuvani Mandyani 56 n.o.).
At Rajkot: Saurashtra 285 and 79 for two in 32 overs (V. Joshi 33 batting) vs. Hyderabad 272 in 113.3 overs (Akshat Reddy 36, S. Rajan 55, Habeeb Ahmed 58, Sivavara Prasad 29, B. Jadeja four for 86, B.M. Gor three for 53).
At Mumbai: Jammu and Kashmir 370 and 32 for no loss in seven overs vs. Mumbai 437 for five decl. in 125 overs (Omkar Gaurav 175, S.S. Damle 105, Anup Revendkar 59 n.o., Iqbal Abdullah 38 n.o.).
Plate group: At Visakhapatnam: Haryana 315 in 133.2 overs (Prateek Pawar 77, Abhimanyu Khoda 69, Kuldeep Hooda 58, Sandeep Khoda 25) and 158 for eight decl. in 55.3 overs (Prateek Pawar 38, P. Sheoran 30, J. Yadav 25 n.o.) vs. Andhra 138 in 70.3 overs (K. Bharat Reddy 31, K. Hooda four for 26) and 23 for two in 12 overs.
