The Ranji Trophy has entered it’s final stage. The 3 month long tournament where all the different states in India fight it out is just 3 games away from crowing a champion. The south Indian giants Karnataka, Saurashtra, Gujarat and Bengal were the teams who qualified for the semi-finals.
The defending champions Vidarbha had to face the axe as they were knocked out before the semis. Another team who are habituated to win the Ranji titles in Mumbai also were knocked out which shows the quality and strength of other states around India.
In one of the semi-final between Karnataka and Bengal, when the Bengal were batting a hilarious incident happened on the field when the two fielders miscommunicated to give an easy boundary to the batsman Sudeep Chaterjee off the bowling of the Kolkata Knight Riders speedster Prasidh Krishna who was clearly not happy with the performance from the fielders.
India’s limited overs wicket-keeper batsman KL Rahul who is in the form of his life has been drafted into the Karnataka side for the all important semi final game against the red hot Bengal.
After batting first Bengal posted a healthy 312 runs on the board with a fighting century from the veteran Anustup Majumdar. The whole of Karnataka bowlers chipped with wickets in the first innings.
It was expected that the strong Karnataka batting order would go past the 1st innings score of Bengal and take a crucial 1st innings lead but in an interesting turn of events, Karnataka were bowled out for a paltry 122 runs with none of the batsmen reaching 40.
The Karnataka batsmen stumbled to the pace and bounce of Ishan Porel who finished with a 5-fer in the first innings. The star attraction KL Rahul scored a 67 ball 26 runs.
Bengal after acquiring a huge first innings lead are in a strong position with a lead of 353 runs under their belt and are continuing the pile up the lead.