It has now become a sort of habit for Delhi to lose its openers early as in the second Ranji game of the season, once again, Delhi lost an early wicket. This time it was Gautam Gambhir, who is celebrating his birthday today, who was dismissed early.

The centurion of the last game this time could just manage a score of 2. Anureet Singh took advantage of early morning and got caught the batsman behind the stumps. Another failure of Unmukt Chand followed who was run out on 11. With another defeat in this game, the former Under 19 captain is now slowly enticing selectors to drop him from the squad. In the past season as well, they took a note of Unmukt’s consecutive failures and dropped him from the Vijay Hazare squad initially.

Ranji Trophy 2017/18: Middle Order Comes To Delhi Rescue After Another Top Order Failure 2 — Nitish Rana plays a shot during IPL. Image Credits: BCCI

The next batsman was to be dismissed was Dhruv Shorey (16). The pressure to steer the team ahead was on youngster Nitish Rana and the debutant Himmat Singh. Both the batsmen shared 109 runs for the fourth wicket to get Delhi out of the problematic situation.

Himmat was pretty much close to his half-century before Avinash Yadav got him out on 45. Nitish too missed out on a second consecutive century as he was dismissed on 89 after being stumped. Once again, it looked like Delhi innings will face a major slump but then it was the turn of Anuj Rawat and Manan Sharma to show their batting skills.

They both shared 111 runs for the sixth wicket to frustrate the Railways’ bowlers. Anuj Rawat once again fell short of much-deserved hundred while Manan is still batting on a score of 68.

Delhi ended the day with a score of 318 in 90 overs. The visitors, in their own their state, will be looking to bat at least the first session on day 2 to pile up on home side’s misery.

Brief score –

Group A

Krishnappa Gowtham | Ranji Trophy 2017/18 | — Krishnappa Gowtham appeals for an LBW dismissal

Delhi: 318/6 (Nitish Rana 89, Anuj Rawat 74, Manan Sharma 68*; Anureet Singh 3-71) vs Railways in Delhi.

Assam: 145/10 (Gokul Sharma 55; Krishnappa Gowtham 4-20) vs Karnataka 77/0 (R Samarth 47*, Mayank Agarwal 26*) in Mysore.

Uttar Pradesh vs Hyderabad: Day 1 abandoned due to rain in Hyderabad.

Group B

Ravindra Jadeja | Indian cricket team | — Ravindra Jadeja with his Man of the Match award. Image Courtesy: AP

Saurashtra: 428/4 (Sheldon Jackson 181, Ravindra Jadeja 150*; Ram Dayal 1-60)vs Jammu and Kashmir in Rajkot.

Kerala: 208/10 (Sanju Samson 51, Sachin Baby 49; Piyush Chawla 5-69) vs Gujarat (Samit Gohel 26*, Akshay Chandran 6-1) in Nadiad.

Team Rajasthan: 250/4 (AV Gautam 103*, TN Dhillon 66*; Ashish Kumar 2-48) vs Jharkhand in Jaipur.

Group C –

Naman Ojha | Indian cricket team | — Naman Ojha during a practice session

Madhya Pradesh: 250/5 (Naman Ojha 99*, Ankit Sharma 63*; Akash Parkar 2-48) vs Mumbai in Indore.

Baroda: 247/7 (Kedar Devdhar 93, Vishnu Solanki 61,; Ayyappa Bandaru 3-46) vs Andhra Pradesh in Vadodara.

Tripura: 244/7 (Samit Patel 99, Yashpal Singh 96; Vignesh K 2-36, Washington Sundar 2-40) vs Tamil Nadu in Chennai.

Group D –

Yuvraj Singh | IPL | Indian cricket team | BCCI | Indian selectors | — Yuvraj Singh during team India’s practice session. Photo Credits: Getty Images

Punjab: 161/10 (Abhishek Gupta 89, Yuvraj Singh 20; Siddhesh Neral 3-48, Lalit Yadav 3-47) vs Vidarbha: 106/1 (SR Ramaswamy 52*, Wasim Jaffer 22*; Abhishek Sharma 1-26) in Mohali.

Bengal: 283/2 (Abhishek Raman 94, Koushik Bilpal Ghosh 114; SA Singh 1-82) vs Chattisgarh in Raipur.

Goa: 255/10 (RR Singh 55*, Sagun Kamat 36; PP Jaswal 4-59, SL Verma 3-33) vs Himachal Pradesh: 2/0 in Dharamsala.