Young Abhimanyu Easwaran showed a glimpse of his talent with the bat scoring an unbeaten 150 that gave Bengal the hopes of securing a win over Tamil Nadu in the Group A Ranji Trophy match at the Eden Gardens on Wednesday.
The 19-year-old, an alumnus of the Bengal under-19 side, held up the host’s first-innings showing fine temperament and technique, and helped the host reach a strong 454 for nine before the declaration was announced.
Bengal overtook Tamil Nadu’s first innings total of 246 for nine before giving the visitor the challenge to save the match. Tamil Nadu was 80 for one at stumps in its second innings as Bengal looked for its first outright win of the season with a full day’s play left.
Resuming on 183 for two, Bengal batsmen built on the strong foundation as Abhimanyu joined his overnight partner Manoj Tiwary for a 154-run partnership for the third wicket, and took Bengal past TN’s first innings total.
Tiwary played a delectably aggressive innings peppered with 14 boundaries but fell short of his 20th First Class century by just three runs. Tiwary, Bengal’s most technically sound batsman, perished dragging the ball to the stumps when trying to sweep young Tamil Nadu left-arm spinner Aushik Srinivas.
After Tiwary left, Abhimanyu took control and continued to score with an array of nicely timed drives and cuts.
Abhimanyu shared a 102-run partnership with all-rounder Saurasish Lahiri (43) for the seventh wicket that pushed Bengal’s total well past 400.
Left-arm pacer T. Natarajan, who made his debut for Tamil Nadu, was the pick of the visitor’s bowlers picking up three wickets for 92 runs.
However, it was Abhimanyu day; the young batsman showed lot of maturity during his 427-minute stay, his knock giving his captain Laxmi Ratan Shukla the option of pushing for an outright win.
The scores:
Tamil Nadu — 1st innings: 246 in 88.4 overs.
Bengal — 1st innings: Rohan Banerjee c Bharath Shankar b Natarajan 27, Arindam Das lbw b Balaji 48, Abhimanyu Eswaran (not out) 150, Manoj Tiwary b Srinivas 97, Sudip Chatterjee lbw b Natarajan 23, Laxmi Ratan Shukla c Natarajan b Mohammed 6, Shreevats Goswami c Bharath Shankar b Natarajan 1, Saurasish Lahiri b Mohammed 43, Sourav Sarkar st Karthik b Srinivas 19, Ashok Dinda b Srinivas 0, Pritam Chakraborty (not out) 6, Extras (nb-7, b-15, lb-12) 34; Total (for nine wickets declared in 121 overs) 454.
Fall in wickets: 1-74, 2-102, 3-256, 4-303, 5-311, 6-319, 7-421, 8-446, 9-446.
Tamil Nadu bowling: L. Balaji 23-4-70-1, M. Mohammed 32-7-101-2, T. Natarajan 25-4-92-3, R. Sathish 8-0-41-0, R. Aushik Srinivas 28-3-101-3, B. Aparajith 5-0-22-0.
Tamil Nadu — 2nd innings: K. Bharath Shankar (batting) 38, Abhinav Mukund lbw b Dinda 33, R. Aushik Srinivas (batting) 1, Extras (lb-8) 8; Total (for one wicket in 20 overs) 80.
Fall of wicket: 1-70.
Bengal bowling: Ashoke Dinda 7-2-31-1, Sourav Sarkar 5-3-9-0, Laxmi Ratan Shukla 3-1-9-0, Pritam Chakraborty 3-1-13-0, Saurasish Lahiri 1-0-3-0, Manoj Tiwary 1-0-7-0.
