Irani Cup: Smaran’s hundred steers Rest of India to safer waters

Ravichandran Smaran shared a potentially game-breaking alliance of 109 with Mukesh Choudhary for the ninth wicket to help Rest of India not just wrest back the advantage but also take the visitors to a position of strength at stumps on Day 3 against Jammu and Kashmir in the Irani Cup. On the back of the left-hand batter’s unbeaten 126, RoI ended the day at 306/8, in front by 265 runs, in Srinagar.

The value of the left-hand batter’s innings could be gauged by the fact that Mukesh scored just nine runs out of a hundred-plus stand. In fact, when Mukesh joined forces with Smaran, the latter was batting on 40. It was in the 80th over when Smaran began to land meaty blows off Abid Mushtaq. While facing the new ball, he took on Umar Nazir and Nasir Lone to crack some fine shots. The salient feature of his innings was his traits to use his height to land pulls and lofts, alongside clever rotation of strike.

At the fag end of the day, Smaran hit top gear by collecting a slew of shots while facing Lotra. It was a quintessential innings from the left-hand batter, considering that he has already gained a reputation for his run-scoring ability while batting alongside lower-order batters.

Earlier, Sanat Sangwan’s stubborn hand of 55 off 160 deliveries and Sudip Kumar Gharami’s 33 had propelled RoI to 128 for 3. Unfortunately for them, Nazir and Lotra shared three wickets each to engineer a collapse. Even Rishabh Pant, the RoI skipper, couldn’t make an impression for the second time in the innings, getting out for just 8. Just that they couldn’t pick the all-important wicket of Smaran.

On Day 4, J&K would hope to bowl RoI for a lead of under 300. On a side note, the track is still doing enough for the pacers.

Brief Scores: Rest of India 237 (Smaran Ravichandran 68, Shikhar Mohan 60; Sunil Kumar 3-36, Lone Nasir Muzaffar 3-59) and 306/8 (Smaran Ravichandran 126*, Sanat Sangwan 55; Sahil Lotra 3-71) lead Jammu and Kashmir 278 (Paras Dogra 75, Lone Nasir Muzaffar 64, Abdul Samad 57; Mukesh Choudhary 5-78, Akash Deep 3-43) by 265 runs.

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