UP tottering at 36 for 2 at lunch

Nagpur, Oct 10 (UNI) Uttar Pradesh (UP) were tottering at 36 for two in their second innings at lunch on the second day of their Irani Trophy tie after conceding a lead of 53 runs to Rest of India (RoI) today.

UP were in deep trouble, losing two wickets with only four runs on the board as openers Praveen Kumar and Tanmay Srivastava returned to the pavilion without opening their accounts. Some cautious batting by Shivkant Shukla and Ravikant Shukla saw their team reach 36 at the interval. Shivkant was batting on 26 and Ravikant on eight during lunch hour.

Earlier, the UP bowlers had to toil for 90 minutes to send the three remaining batsmen of RoI back. Resuming at the overnight score of 131 for 7, L Balaji and S Badrinath added 39 for the eighth wicket. The last pair of Bardinath and Pragyan Ojha added 46 crucial runs to the RoI tally.

Badrinath had an excellent outing, remaining unbeaten with 80 runs to his credit with 16 hits to the fence. He completed his 50 in 77 balls with 10 boundaries.

Shalabh Shrivastava snatched two more wickets today to end with figures of 5 for 74. Praveen Kumar took 3 for 64.

RoI 1st innings (resuming at 131 for 7 overnight): S Badrinath not out 80, L Balaji c Rizwan b Shalab Srivastava 15, V R V Singh b Shalabh Srivastava 00, Pragyan Ojha c Shivkant Shukla b Avinash Yadav 03, Extras 13 (4 b, 1 lb, 8 nb) total 201 all out in 262 minutes, 53.3 overs.

FOW: 8/155 9/155 10/201 Bowling: Ashish Zaidi 8-1-36-0, Shalabh Srivastava 20.3-4-74-5, Praveen Kumar 17-4-64-3, Avinash Yadav 8-2-22-1.

UP 2nd innings: Praveen Kumar c M Karthik b Zaheer Khan 00, Shivkant Shukla batting 26, Tanmay Srivastava run out (Gautam Gambhir) 00, Ravikant Shukla batting 08, Extras 02 (2 b) total 36 for 2.

FOW: 1/0 2/4 UNI XR PM SY KP1540