Ranji Trophy: Tamil Nadu hand Jaydev Unadkat's Saurashtra innings defeat

Tamil Nadu beat Saurashtra by an innings and 70 runs in Round 1 of the Ranji Trophy. Medium pacer Gurjapneet Singh ran through the Saurashtra batting order to hand them a heavy defeat.

In Short

• Cheteshwar Pujara fails in Round 1 of the Ranji Trophy
• Tamil Nadu beat Saurashtra by an innings and 70 runs
• Gurjapneet Singh turns hero in final innings of the match

Ambala-born medium pacer Gurjapneet Singh turned hero for Tamil Nadu as the R Sai Kishore handed a heavy defeat to Saurashtra in the opening round of the Ranji Trophy on Monday, October 14. Gurjapneet picked up 6 wickets in the second innings for Tamil Nadu bundling out Saurashtra for just 94 runs. Saurashtra - a domestic powerhouse in recent years had no answer to the pacer's skills.

The seamer picked up crucial wickets of Chirag Jani, Parswaraj Rana, Cheteshwar Pujara, Arpit Vasavada, Prerak Mankad, and Sheldon Jackson to leave Saurashtra reeling in their final innings of the game. It needs to be reminded that the Tamil Nadu team were aided by the fantastic ground staff at the Coimbatore Stadium, who were able to dry up the ground after a tremendous amount of rainfall from the previous day.

Earlier in the match, after bowling out Saurashtra for 203 in the first innings, Tamil Nadu piled out runs, courtesy of Narayan Jagadeesan, who slammed a century. Sai Sudharsan (82) and Pradosh Ranjan Paul (49) added crucial runs in the top 3 and helped the hosts to reach a total of 367 runs. This at the end of the day proved too good for the famed batting line-up for the Saurashtra side.

The match was considered open the second Gurpanjeet removed Pujara for a 6-ball duck. Speaking to the New Indian Express, the seamer explained that the Tamil Nadu side planned the wicket of the batter well and it paid off.

“When you bowl to a legendary batsman like him, you have to be accurate from the word go. So the plan was to push him on the backfoot and then send in a good front foot ball that would make him uncomfortable. Having gone wicketless in the first innings, Bala bhai (L Balaji) told me to go out there looking for a wicket as there is a strong chance that I would deviate from the plan. And with the pitch not offering much, around the stumps was the best option and it worked as we also saw (Jaydev) Unadkat do the same in the morning session” Gurjapneet says.

The seamer also revealed that he had picked up the wicket of Virat Kohli in the Chennai nets when India visited the city for their first Test match against Bangladesh. Gurjapneet revealed that he was given a cold stare by Kohli when he was able to pick the batter's wicket.

“After I bowled him, I looked at him and didn’t dare to look at him again,” Gurjapneet recollected.

“He was very, very angry. But I realised, he was angry with himself more than anything. And after a straight drive, he again looked at me and smiled,” he further added.

With the innings victory, Tamil Nadu grabbed all the points available (7) from the first game. They will next play Delhi on 18 October.