da stake casino： An unbeaten 97 in difficult circumstances by DA Chougule and somegood bowling performances by both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka whichresulted in as many as 17 wickets falling was the feature of the first dayof the Cooch Behar Trophy South Zone league
Natarajan Sriram26-Sep-2000An unbeaten 97 in difficult circumstances by DA Chougule and somegood bowling performances by both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka whichresulted in as many as 17 wickets falling was the feature of the first dayof the Cooch Behar Trophy South Zone league match at the IIT- Chemplastground in Chennai on Thursday. Tamil Nadu struggled to 82 for seven atstumps after bowling out Karnataka for 159 in their first innings.Tamil Nadu made a sedate start in their first innings with openers RSainath (13) and K Vasudeva Das (18) putting on 33 runs in 11.4 overs.Vasudeva Das was the first to go when he offered a return catch toDharmichand. Off the very next ball, R Prasanna departed, giving a catch toChougule. Then Aditya Srikkanth (20) and Sainath took thescore to 46, before the latter was out, giving a catch back to thebowler Dharmichand.Srikkanth was joined by E Suresh (8) for a brief period. Thetwo took the score to 63, when Suresh gave a catch to BMV Uthappa offSV Lasarus. Three balls later, Srikkanth became the fourth victim ofDharmichand when he was picked up by AK Bafna. Tamil Nadu then were in aspot of bother when Lazarus dismissed T Dushyanth (3) and Dharmichand sentback skipper Vidyuth Sivaramakrishnan (8) with 74on the board. Tamil Nadu ended an eventful day at 82 with L Balaji(2) and KKD Karthik (6) at the crease. Dharmichand was the wrecker-inchief for Karnataka with figures of five for 30 in his 14 overs.In the morning, disaster struck early for Karnataka when they elected tobat. Opener HTS Rao (0) was bowled off the fourth ball of the day by TBalaji. The other opener DV Krishna did not last longand departed in the sixth over when he was dismissed in much thesimilar way as his partner. Then BMV Uthappa (23) and DA Chougule joinedtogether to bring up the fifty for Karnataka.Then with the score at 59, Vidyuth struck the vital blow by havingUthappa caught behind by Kartik. The very next ball saw skipper C Raghureturning to the pavilion after being out in a similar manner. Ten runslater Stuart Binny was lured out of the crease by Vidyuth to be stumped byKartik. The next over from Vidyuth saw AK Bafna returning to the pavilionafter being stumped by Kartik.The next over by Balaji saw the departure of Dharmichand (0). ThenVidyuth came back to pick up the wicket of Lazarus. At the other endChougule was waging a lone battle. He reached his half century afterbatting for about 2-1/2 hours. He kept up the scoring rate with neat hitsto the fence interspersed with some solid batsmanship even as he lost hispartners at regular intervals. But Chougule found unlikely partners in theKarnataka tail and a 38-run ninth wicket partnership ensued between him andG Sendhil Kumar (7) which made sure of Karnataka going past the 100 runmark. Then NT Pinto (3) gave him company to help Karnataka end the firstinnings at 159. Chougule batted 208 minutes, faced 163 balls and hit 10fours and a six. Vidyuth was the most successful bowler. The left armspinner ended the innings with figures of 5 for 36 in his 20 overs.