Gautam Gambhir was patience personified while unheralded Kunal Chandela showed maturity beyond years as their twin tons took Delhi to a commanding 271 for three against Bengal on the second day of the Ranji Trophy semi-final, on Monday.<\/p>\n
With Bengal scoring a below par 286 in their first essay, they are sure to concede first innings lead.<\/p>\n
The only positive aspect for Bengal was final session where Delhi scored only 51 runs losing three wickets including Gambhir (127 off 216 balls) off Mohammed Shami.<\/p>\n
Gambhir was an epitome of calmness during his 42nd first-class hundred in company of Chandela (113 off 192 balls), who is playing only his third first-class match.<\/p>\n
The manner in which Gambhir-Chandela duo humiliated a Bengal attack comprising Shami (23.2-3-83-1) and Ashok Dinda (18-2-86-1) looked pedestrian.<\/p>\n
The best part about Gambhir this season has been his attitude. He has remain attached with a goal of guiding Delhi with crucial runs yet remained uninvolved like an isolated island.<\/p>\n
A pull in front of the square followed by a square cut played on the rise off Shami set the tone.<\/p>\n
There was no stopping Gambhir as the sparse crowd egged him on.<\/p>\n
\u201cGambhir bhai, make Manoj Tiwary chase all the way to the boundary,\u201d shouted one.<\/p>\n
When Dinda intentionally threw a ball towards Gambhir on follow through — all in very bad taste, he simply swayed away from the line and didn\u2019t react.<\/p>\n
He hit two back to back boundaries off Amir Gani to reach his hundred. Identical cover drives — one that raced through the ground and another lofted to reach the milestone in 122 balls.<\/p>\n
When he raised his bat, the Delhi players sprinted down the stairs from dressing room to give him a standing ovation.<\/p>\n
Once through with hundred, he took fresh guard.<\/p>\n
Chandela, on the other hand, waited for the pitched up deliveries, playing those flowing cover drives while the ones rising from length were defended.<\/p>\n
The six off Gani was majestic and so were the most of his 18 fours during the 232-run opening stand with Gambhir.<\/p>\n
The first 25 overs saw Bengal going for 24 boundaries with B Amit (22-9-47-1) simply not good enough to be a third seamer.<\/p>\n
Chandela hit four boundaries in an Amit over as the pressure was let loose.<\/p>\n
Someone like Shami was also unable to bowl maiden overs.<\/p>\n
With Bengal playing only three and a half bowlers, Shami was made to bowl nearly 24 overs, something the Indian team management won\u2019t be amused.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s only Ranji Trophy. Don\u2019t judge him by this performance,\u201d said CAB president Sourav Ganguly about Shami.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gautam Gambhir was patience personified while unheralded Kunal Chandela showed maturity beyond years as their twin tons took Delhi to a commanding 271 for three against Bengal on the second day of the Ranji Trophy semi-final, on Monday. With Bengal scoring a below par 286 in their first essay, they are sure to concede first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14430,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14429","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14429"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14431,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14429\/revisions\/14431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}