Bhatia keeps TN at bay with a brilliant century

Harpreet Singh Bhatia led from the front for Chhattisgarh with a masterful unbeaten 149 (322b, 12×4, 2×6) denting Tamil Nadu’s quest for an outright win by taking his side to 261 for eight at stumps on day three of the Ranji Trophy clash here at the Nehru Stadium on Saturday.

For the third day in succession, the play could not be started on time and, on Saturday, the first session had to be skipped due to wet outfield following overnight showers.

TN, which had posted 470, struck early when Sai Kishore removed overnight batter Shashank Singh caught at silly point to reduce Chhattisgarh to 118 for six. After losing a session in the morning, TN needed to get things done quickly to press for a victory.

Sensible batting

But at the other end, Bhatia, along with Ajay Mandal, batted sensibly adding 83 runs for the seventh wicket.

After getting to his half-century, Bhatia started to accelerate with fine sweeps to the fence off the spinners before picking two sixes down the ground. He got to his hundred in style with a straight hit down the ground against Aparajith for a boundary.

Speaking after the match, Bhatia said, “As a captain, there is an added responsibility and I am happy I could do it for the team. There was some sharp turn and the ball was keeping low. So I just looked to play straight and even while playing on the backfoot, preferred to punch through the off-side than cut.”

TN had a chance when Aparajith removed Mandal caught behind and Sai Kishore dismissed Mohammed Hussain just before tea to have the opponents at 208 for eight.

However, in the final session, Bhatia farmed strike with lower-order Veer Pratap Singh doing his bit with solid defence as the duo added an unbeaten 53-run for the ninth wicket.

TN’s struggle to clean up the lower order has been a perennial problem over the last three to four years and the lack of a genuine quick bowler once again hurt the team as it felt the absence of someone like T. Natarajan who can be accurate with his yorkers.

To make things worse, Bhatia was dropped by Shahrukh on 139 running backwards from mid-on and failing to hold on to the chance.

The scores:

Tamil Nadu – 1st innings: 470/9 decl.

Chhattisgarh – 1st innings: Akhil Herwadkar lbw b Sai Kishore 11, Sanidhya Hurkat lbw b Siddharth 6, Ashutosh Singh c Kaushik b Mohammed 9, Harpreet Singh Bhatia (batting) 149, Amandeep Khare c Indrajith b Sai Kishore 23, Sumit Ruikar lbw b Siddharth 0, Shashank Singh c Suryapprakash b Sai Kishore 2, Ajay Mandal c Jagadeesan b Aparajith 35, Mohammed Hussain lbw b Sai Kishore 0, Veer Pratap Singh (batting) 3; Extras (b-23): 23; Total (for eight wkts. in 114 overs): 261.

Fall of wickets: 1-14, 2-24, 3-40, 4-98, 5-99, 6-118, 7-201, 8-208.

Tamil Nadu bowling: Warrier 12-2-45-0, Siddharth 26-10-55-2, Sai Kishore 33-12-48-4, Mohammed 8-5-10-1, Aparajith 26-9-54-1, Vijay Shankar 3-1-9-0, Shahrukh 5-0-13-0, Kaushik 1-0-4-0.