Kerala took apart Bengal at their very own Eden Gardens by nine wickets with a day left to claim their second victory in this season of the Ranji Trophy, on Thursday.
The wrecker-in-chief was Sandeep Warrier who backed up a brilliant 143 in the first innings by Jalaj Saxena as his five-wicket haul (5/33) was good enough to blow away Bengal despite a defiant 62 from skipper Manoj Tiwary.
The right-arm fast bowler made use of reverse swing after lunch and also gave his team the breakthrough, just when a 69-run stand between Tiwary and Sudeep Chatterjee looked to rescue Bengal out of deep waters.
Also read: Ranji Trophy: Mumbai, Karnataka share spoils on equal day
After he was done dismissing both Chatterjee and Tiwary, the Bengal innings saw a dramatic collapse wherein they lost their last eight wickets for just 69 runs to only get to 184.
This set a mere 41-run total for Kerala to get for the win and they didn’t hesitate, completing the win to hand Bengal their second loss at the Eden Gardens since 2014 when they had gone down to Karnataka by a similar margin.
Brief scores: Kerala 291 and 44/1 (Jalaj Saxena 26, Arun Karthik 16; Mukesh Kumar 1/4) beat Bengal 147 and 184 (Tiwary 62, Chatterjee 39; Warrier 5/33) by nine wickets.
At Belagavi: Karnataka 400 all out and 81/3 vs Mumbai 205 (Jay Bista 70, Ronit More 5-52).
At Raipur: Chhattisgarh 300 and 2/2 v Railways 330 (Mahesh Rawat 110, Pratham Singh 66, Pankaj Rao 5-72).
At Nadiad: Gujarat 324 and 187/1 (P K Panchal 124 not out, B H Merai 35 not out) v Saurashtra 349 (H Desai 82, Jaydev Shah 81 not out, S A Desai 3-93).
At Nagpur: Vidarbha 529/6 declared Baroda 288/7 (Aditya Waghmode 103, Deepak Hooda 100, Lalit Yadav 2-42).
Andhra 216 all out in 89.5 overs (Girinath Reddy 86 not out, Jyothisaikrishna 58, M Mohammed 4 for 70, T Natarajan 3 for 36, Sai Kishore 3 for 29) vs Tamil Nadu 122 for 3 in 50 overs (M Kaushik Gandhi 38).
At Indore: Punjab 293 all out in 84.4 overs (Jiwanjot Singh 124, Gurkeerat Mann 66, Kuldeep Sen 5 for 62, Avesh Khan 4 for 77) and 127 for 1 in 30 overs (Abhishek Sharma 78, Jiwanjot Singh 39 not out) vs Madhya Pradesh 315 all out in 124.2 overs (Rajat Patidar 73, Naman Ojha 51, Yash Dubey 65 not out, Mayank Markande 4 for 70).
At Hyderabad: Hyderabad 460 all out in 170.3 overs (Tanmay Agarwal 120, T Ravi Teja 115 not out, Himalay Agarwal 66, C V Milind 58, Gourav Kumar 3 for 50) vs Delhi 245 for 6 in 97 overs (Hiten Dalal 93, Nitish Rana 82, Tanay Thyagarajan 3 for 41).
At Ranchi: Rajasthan 100 and 379 (Ashok Menaria 125; Rajesh Bishnoi Jr 82, Anukul Roy 4-97) v Jharkhand 152 and 24 for no loss.
At Guwahati: Assam 121 and 132 (Sibsankar Roy 56, Rajesh Mohanty 6-55) v Odisha 240 and 16 for 1.
Odisha won by nine wickets.
At Rohtak: Haryana 276 and 185 (Pramod Chandila 122 not out, Krishna Das 5-41) v Goa 177 and 30 for 2.
At Srinagar: Tripura 124 and 233 for 4 (Smit Patel 71 not out, Udiyan Ghosh 67, Waseem Raza 3-59) v Jammu and Kashmir 442 all out.
At New Delhi (Palam): Services 260 and 35 for 1 vs Uttar Pradesh 535 for 9 declared (Rinku Singh 163 not out, Zeeshan Ansari 76, Divesh Gurdev Pathania 4-104).