Duleep Trophy | Ankit Bawne ton in vain as India Red take first-innings lead after Avesh Khan fifer

Brief scores: India Red 285 & 93/2 (Karun Nair 43*) lead India Blue 255 (Ankit Bawne 121*; Avesh Khan 4-58) by 123 runs.

India Blue started the day on 74/3 and Ankit Bawne and Anmolpreet Singh made a superb start for the team. After adding 119 runs in the first session without losing a wicket, Anmolpreet feel victim to Akshay Wakhare and was dismissed for 56. Avesh Khan started weaving magic then by dismissing Ricky Bhui for three and then Jalaj Saxena for a duck which brought Red back in the contest. 

Bawne stood tall at one end and was steadily moving towards his century and he found very good support from Aniket Choudhary who blunted 40 deliveries for his eight. However, the middle-order collapse didn’t really help the cause for India Blue as Avesh and Wakhare inflicted much of the damage. Once Choudhary was dismissed, Bawne struck some crisp boundaries to get to 18th first-class ton - off 211 balls. The Maharashtra batsman remained unbeaten on 121 off 254 before Unadkat trapped Basil Thampi for a duck to secure a 30-run lead. 

With the lead already in the bag, Priyank Panchal and Abhimanyu Easwaran wanted to bat long but Dwiesh Pathania castled him for nine before Saxena got the better of Easwaran. At the time of stumps, Ankit Kalsi and Karun Nair were batting, and the team had already secured an effective lead of 123 runs.