Tura, Jan 25: It was a day of reality check for the U-23 cricket team for the state of Meghalaya in the picturesque Alotgre stadium having been bowled out for a paltry 133 against Bengal even as the town of Tura wrote its name in the history books hosting the first national level game of cricket in the town.
The historic day was opened with a felicitation ceremony where the guest players and coaching team were presented souvenirs before the actual play began at 8:30 AM this morning.
Bengal opted to bowl first against the home team under overcast skies, in a bid to take advantage of early morning seam and swing available in the newly laid pitch at the stadium.
Meghalaya began promisingly with their openers with Tunon Marak, who also took up wicket keeping duties later in the afternoon, being the aggressor. His chancy innings however did not last long as Bengal maintained their lines and lengths to make scoring extremely difficult.
Tunon, who was the first wicket to fall for the hosts, scored 17 before playing while trying to defend pacer Ravi Kumar, the left handed quick. Kumar took 2 wickets even as the spinners made life miserable for the hosts, with 8 wickets being shared between the 4 spinners.
For Meghalaya Kush Agarwala was the highest scorer, labouring to 29 runs before he was plumb in front of wicket, trying to sweep a full ball from the main wrecker in chief for Bengal, Rahul Prasad. Prasad snared 4 wickets through his hugely turning off – spin while leg spinner Prayas Ray Barman took two more. The other two left arm spinners took a wicket each.
The scorecard for Meghalaya was a sorry read with 5 of the batsmen throwing away their wicket after getting a start, mainly due to the fact that the Bengal team dried up run scoring. For Meghalaya, Satwick scored 26, captain Kevin Christopher made 16 and Josiah Momin 14. At least 6 batsmen were out to single figure scores.
The innings ended in 63.1 overs with the last wicket, Abhishek being caught in the slips without scoring.
The Bengal innings got off to a disastrous start with them losing opener Suman Nag to a sharp catch by the captain of spinner Manish without a run on the board. Subham Singh, who came after the fall of Nag was kept quiet and the pressure got to him as Manish took his second. The other opener, Ayush Singh tried to open up to relieve the pressure. While he was able to score a few boundaries, his aggressive approach led to his downfall as he was caught down the leg side while trying to clip one behind the wicket.
At this point Bengal were in deep trouble with the scorecard reading 32/3. However aggressive batting by Prayas Ray Barman (31 off 41) and later by Rishabh Chaudhury (33 off 22 undefeated) relieved the pressure.
At the end of stumps on day 1, Bengal were just 17 runs behind with 6 more wickets in hand and in case Meghalaya fail to make a breakthrough in the morning, the hosts will likely be chasing the game over the next 3 days.
While crowds were sparse on the first day, Sunday is expected to be a bumper day even as Chief Minister Conrad Sangma is likely to visit the ground to take a glimpse of the action.
