Abhinav's century on debut, Badrinath rally TN on day one

Chennai, Nov 23 (UNI) A brilliant century by 19 year-old debutant Abhinav Mukund who scored 108 runs and an unbeaten 93 by skipper S Badrinath enabled Tamil Nadu to see through the first day's play with a respectable score of 289 losing five wickets in the first innings at stumps in the Elite Group A Ranji trophy championship superleague match agaist Karnataka here today.

At the M A Chidambaram stadium, Tamil Nadu going into the match under pressure with just one point from two matches, won the toss and put up a confident show with the bat as Mukund and Badri combined well.

Abhinav, the new young talent discovered on the India Under-19 tour to Sri Lanka recently where he caught the attention of the talent spotters with a double ton and a ton in the same match, compiled his score in 266 minutes off 176 balls with the help of 13 fours before being run out.

With Badrinath, who is batting on 93 off 212 balls hitting seven fours and two sixes, Abhinav added 139 runs for the third wicket in 161 minutes. Abhinav thus joined six other Tamil Nadu batsmen to score a century on debut in Ranji trophy.

The list includes P Ramesh, Tony Adams, Mujibur Rehman, Sadagopan Ramesh, Reuben Paul and Hemant Kumar. Badri was at the wicket with another debutant C H Gopinath(3), the wicket-keeper picked in place of Dinesh Karthick who is representing India in the ongoing first test against Pakistan.

For Karnataka , medium pacer N C Ayappa(2-52), R Vinaykuma(1-37) and left arm spinner Sunil Joshi(1-67) picked up the wickets.

UNI