Ranji Trophy 2013-14: Haryana beat Jharkhand in a close game

Despite Varun Aaron’s superlative performance, Jharkhand couldn’t come away with a victory

Match Summary: Haryana (309 &128) beat Jharkhand (231 & 172) by 30 runs.

Points: Jharkhand 0, Haryana 6

As I had written previously, this was expected to be a result oriented game. Unfortunately for Jharkhand, they ended on the wrong side of the result. This is a game which we should have won, but in the end just fell short.

Haryana batted first and reached 309 helped by some solid contributions all round. Varun Aaron was the pick of the bowlers taking 4 wickets while Nadeem got 3. In reply, as usual, Saurabh Tiwary was the sole big contributor with 95 as the team conceded a 78 run lead. In the second innings Haryana were 16 for 5 at one stage but Sachin Rana’s 84 took them to 124 setting Jharkhand a target of 203. Bhavin Thaker and Ishank Jaggi’s got half centuries but their was no support from anyone else with only Rahul Shukla reaching double digits.

Only positive - Varun Aaron’s 7 wicket haul in the match.

Season Stats

Top Scorer: Saurabh Tiwary – 220 runs @ 55.00Most Wickets: Varun Aaron – 8 wickets @ 18.63

Standings - 2 points after 3 games. Jharkhand slides down further to the bottom most position. Knock-out chances getting slimmer and relegation highly probable. Not a good sign. Come on guys.

Coming up next - Familiar East Zone rivals Odisha away. More evenly matched teams though Jharkhand does have a slight upper hand.