Lucknow, Feb 18: Ravichandran Smaran scored his second successive hundred as Karnataka continued to grind down Uttarakhand to reach 299 for six in their second innings for a whopping overall lead of 802 runs on the fourth day of the Ranji Trophy semifinal here on Wednesday.
Karnataka assured a berth in the title clash against Jammu and Kashmir, securing a 503-run first innings lead after bowling out Uttarakhand for 233 in their first innings in the opening session of the penultimate day.
However, that massive lead notwithstanding, Karnataka did not enforce the follow-on, and used the second innings to give further practice to their batters ahead of the final, starting from February 26.
Karnataka promoted lower-order batters like Kruthik Krishna and Shreyas Gopal to give them some game time and the former put that into good use with a 52.
But Smaran, once again, was at the forefront of Karnataka’s charge with a 127 off 149 balls (12×4, 3×6), stitching together a stand of 168 runs with KL Rahul (70 batting, 67b) for the fifth wicket.
Smaran and Rahul came together after Uttarakhand bowlers captured four wickets upfront to reduce Karnataka to 122 for four in their second innings, though the visitors lead, by then, had gone past the 600-run mark.
This was the 22-year-old Smaran’s second hundred in the match after making a 135 in the first innings to power Karnataka to an imposing 736.
Earlier, Uttarakhand started the day at a wobbly 149 for five with Lakshya Raichandani and Saurabh Rawat starting the proceedings for them.
However, Karnataka got the first breakthrough of the day in the first over itself. Pacer Vyshak Vijayakumar ousted Rawat for 14, and Raichandani too soon was castled by the same bowler.
Uttarakhand too slipped to 175 for nine, but Aditya Rawat made an unbeaten 45 off 38 balls to take his side past 200.
For Karnataka, pacers Vyshak and Vidyadhar Patil took six wickets among them equally to rattle the rivals. (PTI)
