TN piles up mammoth 674 for 6 as Delhi pays price for sub-standard bowling

NEW DELHI: Washington Sundar and Pradosh Ranjan Paul feasted on Delhi’s sub-standard spin attack to hit hundreds as Tamil Nadu drowned Delhi under a deluge of runs to take complete control of their Group D Ranji Trophy match at the end of second day here on Saturday.

Tamil Nadu declared its first innings at 674 for 6 and in the remaining time, Delhi reached 43 for no loss in 16 overs with stand-in opener Harsh Tyagi joining Sanat Sangwan after regular opener Dhruv Kaushik split his webbing.

Delhi is also hamstrung by an on-field injury to all-rounder Pranshu Vijayran and not conceding an innings defeat to Tamil Nadu would be a big achievement for the host.

After Sai Sudharsan’s (213) double ton on the opening day, his fellow India international Washington Sundar repaid the team management’s faith of promoting him to No. 3 as he scored a polished 152 off 269 balls with 19 fours and a six.

Having added 232 for the second wicket with Sudharsan, Washington shared another 92 runs for the fourth wicket with India ‘A’ batter Paul (117 off 175 balls) while Andre Siddharth also chipped in with an unbeaten 66.

Navdeep Saini (2/78 in 24 overs) was the only bowler who looked like making some kind of difference but questions will be asked about the quality of the two spinners -- left-arm orthodox Tyagi (1/181 in 37.4 overs) and unfit-looking off-break bowler Mayank Rawat (0/194 in 50 overs), who were cut, pulled, driven, swept and lofted to all parts of the Kotla.

In total, the two specialist spinners bowled close to 88 overs and they had only three maidens which showed that they couldn’t even check the run-flow, forget about getting breakthroughs.

Tyagi, a former India U-19 spinner, was released by Delhi a few seasons ago and went to Railways but success eluded him there as well and he was back in DDCA fold since last year.

He has been rewarded for his DPL performance but neither chief selector Gursharan Singh nor head coach Sarandeep Singh looked at specialist red-ball spinner Sumit Mathur, who got nine wickets on his debut during the final match of last season.

Both Tyagi and Rawat consistently bowled short and were hammered into submission. With Pranshu injured while bowling his sixth over on the opening day, skipper Himmat Singh continued using Rawat even as Tamil Nadu batters made merry.

While Tyagi was hit for 21 boundaries and a six, Rawat conceded 19 hits to the fence plus two maximums.

Brief scores: Tamil Nadu 674/6 decl. In 158.2 overs (Sai Sudharsan 213, Washington Sundar 152, Pradosh Ranjan Paul 117, C Andre Siddarth 66*, N Jagadeesan 65) vs Delhi 43 for no loss in 16 overs