Ranji Trophy: Pragyan Ojha stars in Bengal's first win of season

Kolkata Leftarm spinner Pragyan Ojha spun Bengal to their maiden victory this season as his careerbest match haul of 11 wickets helped the hosts outplay Vidarbha by 105 runs in the Group A Ranji Trophy cricket match which witnessed an intense finish here yesterdayChasing a stiff 297 Vidarbha almost saw the day through with a valiant 96 from Ganesh Satish 11x4 1x6 but the new Bengal recruit trapped him LBW with a ball that stayed low en route to 460 in the second innings to make it 183 for nine in the last ball of 82nd over With light fading fast and Bengal needing the last wicket two catches were dropped to add more drama in the fag end of the fourth and final dayBut before it could go out of their hands Veer Pratap Singh 323 who had given the first two breakthroughs in the day sealed the win dismissing Ravikumar Thakur to spark early Diwali celebrations in the hosts camp Having defeated the team which was placed second before the match Bengal thus opened up the table to jump to top four and brighten their lasteight hopes while Vidarbha dropped to fifthBengal are now ahead of Vidarbha and behind thirdplaced Assam on net runrate as all the three teams have 16 points while Delhi 24 and reigning champions Karnataka 21 occupy top two in the standings Man of the Match Ojha who has had a quiet season for his new team so far made it memorable at the Jadavpur Universitysecond campus ground in Salt lake as he made all the difference in the bowling unit en route to his careerbest 11118 in Ranji TrophyIn firstclass cricket this was his third 10th wicket match haul and first in Ranji Trophy with the other two coming in Test and a county for Surrey Earlier Veer Pratap gave the first breakthroughs dismissing Wasim Jaffer three and Faiz Fazal nine before Satish stitched 67 with Subramaniam Badrinath 31But before they could make it big Ojha gave twin blows in Badrinath and Shalabh Shrivastava 1 in successive overs while Ashok Dinda made it 85 for five at lunch castling Shrikant Wagh for a duck It may have seemed a cakewalk for Bengal but Satish stood in between their win with his 201ball knock spanning five hours and 25 minutes to frustrate Tiwary in the second session that belonged to VidarbhaThe Bengal skipper bowled nine overs and took the only wicket to fall in the second session Amol Ubarhande eight but it did not help the cause as Ojha hardly got any support at the other end Satish meanwhile started to look threatening having completed his 20th firstclass half century with a boundary off Ojha against whom he also struck a sixNothing working for Bengal Tiwary brought in another parttimer in Pankaj Shaw a move that clicked as the offspinner dismissed Aditya Sarwate 24 LBW first ball to bring an end to his 56run seventh wicket partnership with Satish It was the turning point of the match man of the match Ojha said acknowledging Shaws effortBut we never gave up hope It was about being patient and bowling consistently Somebody had to do something extra ordinary and Im glad that my contribution helped the team Satish looked solid in his defence and was happy to avoid the singles to avoid giving strike to the tailenders as he neared his centuryFour runs shy of the feat Ojha bowled an unplayable delivery that stayed low and went straight to hit Satish in front of middle stump and it was all open for Bengal To add more drama Tiwary dropped Bandiwar at slip before the same batsman was dropped by Ojha off his own bowling to miss out on his 12th victimTiwary opted to give a break to Ojha and brought on Veer Pratap who was quick to dismiss Thakur in the very first ball after the batsman took an outside edge and was caught by wicketkeeper Shreevats GoswamiBrief ScoresBengal 334 and 164 Vidarbha 202 and 191 all out in 911 overs Ganesh Satish 96 Subramaniam Badrinath 31 Pragyan Ojha 460 Points Bengal 6 Vidarbha 0