Balaji's five-for hands Tamil Nadu a massive win over UP

Ghaziabad, Nov 18 (UNI) A superb five-wicket haul by Laxmipati Balaji coupled with captain Dinesh Karthik's (213) double century guided Tamil Nadu to an innings and 288-run win over Uttar Pradesh on the third day of the Ranji Trophy Super League Group B match here today.

After Karthik helped the visitors to pile a mammoth 507 runs in their first innings, Balaji cut short the hosts' challenge to dismiss them for a paltry 119.

Tamil Nadu grabbed six points with this win while the hosts were left empty handed and failed to had a single point.

The home team was completely out of sorts and failed to show any resistance against some superb bowling from Balaji who returned with figures of five for 42 to add to his four wickets in the UP's first innings.

He was well supported by C Ganpathy who sclaped four UP wickets to leave the hosts in a complete disarray.

The home team batsmen lost wickets rather frequently and had their backs to the wall once balaji and Ganpathy came out firing all cylinders.

UP openers Tanmay Srivastava (22) and Sourabh Shukla (21) tried hard to settle down but could not sustain the probing line of the visitors.

Earlier, resuming at overnight score of 356 for four, Karthik made sure that his team takes a healthy first innings lead of 357 and completed a well-deserved double hundred against an indisciplined bowling from UP bowlers.

Karthik had 25 fours in his 396-ball stay at the wicket which finally came to an end when he was out to Gupta with the team score reading 466 for seven.

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