The first quarter-finals of the Ranji Trophy are played between Bengal and Jharkhand. This match is played at Just Cricket Academy Ground, Bangalore. Jharkhand won the toss and decided to throw first. Coming to bat first, Bengal declared the innings scoring 773 runs with the loss of 7 wickets. All Bengal batsmen scored more than 50 runs. This is the first time in Ranji history that the top 9 batsmen have scored more than fifty runs.
Captain Abhimanyu Easwaran scored 65, Abhishek Raman scored 61, Sudip Kumar Gharami scored 186, Anustup Majumdar scored 117, Manoj Tiwary 73, Abhishek Porel scored 68 and Shahbaz Ahmed scored 78. On the other hand, Sayan Mandal remained unbeaten with 53 and Akash Deep scored 53 runs. Akash made it to the end and played a stormy tackle. He completed his fifty in 18 balls. During his swashbuckling innings, Akash hit 8 sixes.
The Bengal team has broken the 129-year-old record set by Australia against Cambridge University. In fact, eight Australia Tourist players had scored fifty against Oxford and Cambridge universities. But there weren’t eight top-order hitters at the time. This is the first time the top 9 hitters have scored more than 50 runs in one inning.
Abhimanyu Easwaran (Captain), Abhishek Raman, Abhishek Porel (WK), Akash Deep, Anustup Majumdar, Ishan Porel, Manoj Tiwary, Mukesh Kumar, Shahbaz Ahmed, Sudip Kumar Gharami, Sayan Mandal.
Anukul Roy, Ashish Kumar, Kumar Devvrat, Kumar Kushagra (week), Nazim Siddiqui, Rahul Shukla, Saurabh Tiwari (c), Shahbaz Nadeem, Sushant Mishra, Utkarsh Singh, Virat Singh.