Ranji Trophy 2015: Sudip Chatterjee, Pragyan Ojha help Bengal gain upperhand
Sudip Chatterjee’s cricket is a throwback to a bygone era. He waits for the ball, plays it as late as possible and hardly shows emotion. The left-hander revels in being unassuming, on and off the field. But when it comes to performing under pressure, he’s the best in this Bengal team by a distance.
On Sunday, Chatterjee scored his third hundred of the season to help his side get out of the woods. His 116 off 200 balls (14X4, 1X6) took Bengal to 334 in their first innings after they started Day 2 of this Ranji Trophy fixture against Vidarbha at a modest 217/7.
The best thing about his effort was the way he batted with the tail. He had a 53-run partnership with Pragyan Ojha (17) for the eighth wicket and then put on another 53 runs with Ashok Dinda (24) for the ninth. Chatterjee never tried to protect the tail-enders. He rather backed them to play their natural game. This is something he has learnt from VVS Laxman during the Cricket Association of Bengal’s Vision 20-20 camp. “I had sessions with him (Laxman) during which he shared his experience of batting with the tail. He explained the mental side of it. Today, we were not in a good position to start with but I had confidence in the lower-order. My plan was to hold one end up and allow Ojha and Dinda to play the way they felt comfortable. The plan worked,” said Chatterjee.
Resuming on overnight 49 he was the last man to go, attempting a big shot off Ravikumar Thakur and nicking it to keeper Amol Ubarhande who completed his seventh catch of the innings. From the hosts’ point of view, however, they had reached safety. Chatterjee was the highest scorer for Bengal last season with 584 runs. But he had only one century. He has already reached three figures thrice in five matches this term. The 24-year-old described this knock as “special” and once again credited Laxman for teaching him to “value” his wicket.
If Chatterjee was the hero of the morning session, then Ojha stole the show post lunch. The pitch at Jadavpur University’s Salt Lake campus ground was still playing slow and low but the Vidarbha batters struggled to cope with the left-arm spinner’s guile. Wasim Jaffer was first to go as Ojha made one sneak through his defence. The veteran batsman, however, returned to a standing ovation after becoming the first player in the Ranji Trophy to score 10,000 runs.
Ganesh Satish (36) added 62 runs for the second wicket but couldn’t cope with the extra bounce that Ojha extracted off the deck. S Badrinath got out to a beauty that pitched on the leg stump and spun sharply to rattle the off. Shalabh Shrivastava departed next ball, popping a catch to Pramod Chandila at short cover. Ubarhande survived the hat-trick ball but failed to read an Ojha armer five deliveries later to be out leg before. Bengal got a grip, thanks to a the left-arm spinner who had switched over from Hyderabad during close season.
Opener Faiz Fazal had dropped anchor at the other end. But Dinda cleaned him up to put the visitors on the ropes.
Vidarbha were reeling at 141/7 when bad light forced an early close of play. “I just tried to bowl in the right areas. The seamers made the job easier for me by keeping things tight. If I continue to bowl like this, something good will happen,” Ojha said after the day’s play.
Brief scores: Bengal 334 all out in 115.4 overs (Sudip Chatterjee 116) vs Vidarbha 141/7 in 52 overs (F Fazal 63; Pragyan Ojha 5/30)
