Ranji Trophy | Parthiv Patel and Manprit Juneja give Gujarat slender lead in final
© BCCI
Gujarat captain Parthiv Patel missed out on a century but his 120-run partnership with Manprit Juneja helped his team to a first-innings lead of 63 runs in the Ranji Trophy final against Mumbai. Abhishek Nayar picked three wickets to peg Gujarat back, but Gujarat managed 291/6 by the end of Day 2.
Brief Scores:Gujarat 291/6 in 92 overs (Parthiv Patel 90, Â Manprit Juneja 77, Abhishek Nayar 3/91) lead by 63 runs against Mumbai 228 all out (Prithvi Shaw 71, Suryakumar Yadav 57; Bhatt 2/5, Gaja 2/46, RP Singh 2/48)
Shardul Thakur struck an early blow for Mumbai on the second day when he induced an edge from Mumbai opener Samit Gohel for a slip catch in the 11th over. Before Gujarat could recover from it, Abhishek Nayar struck once again removing
However, Gujarat captain Parthiv Patel rescued the team once again by building up a steady partnership of 69 runs for the third wicket alongside Bhargav Merai. While
But there was little luck for Mumbai after that as Shreyas Iyer dropped Manprit Juneja's catch for which the bowling team had to pay dearly. Combining with Parthiv in the middle, Juneja played elegant strokes all around the ground. With Parthiv completing his fifty, the duo pushed on the accelerator by scoring almost one boundary every over. Juneja soon completed his fifty with a boundary over square-leg off Nayar's bowling as Gujarat went into the tea break with the score reading 203/3.
Nayar got his third wicket of the day in a similar fashion as his previous two wickets when Parthiv edged a catch to keeper Aditya Tare with his score at 90. Despite the skipper departing, Juneja soon took Gujarat past Mumbai's first-innings score of 228 but had to depart at 254/4 when he gave a return catch to Shardul Thakur.
The game was perfectly poised when Balwinder Sandhu removed Rujul Bhatt for a catch at
