BENGALURU: Medium pacer Arvind Sreenath bagged a splendid hat-trick as Karnataka trounced Tamil Nadu by 285 runs in a little more than three and a half days of play in the group A Ranji Trophy match at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on Wednesday.
Chasing an improbable target of 368 runs, Tamil Nadu folded up for a paltry 82 in just 167 minutes of insipid batting. Sreenath ended up with dream figures of 8-3-9-4 with the three in a row coming in the 33rd over of the innings. Sreenath had Malolan Rangarajan caught by substitute Abrar Kazi, then trapped L Balaji leg before with a straight ball and finally castled M Mohammed with an in-swinger to wrap it up for Karnataka. Sreenath had an overall figures of 8 for 61 and was duly declared as the Man-of-the-Match.
Vinay Kumar started the Tamil Nadu rout as he had Kaushik Gandhi leg before in the eighth over. In the next over, Kaushik’s partner Abhinav Mukund perished, top-edging a rising delivery from Sreenath and Manish Pandey juggled with it before clawing it in the second attempt.
New man Dinesh Karthik had the huge responsibility of steading the innings but an untimely run-out cut short his stay. Going for a run that could have been avoided, Karthik was felled by Shreyas Gopal’s throw from mid-off.
Karnataka were baying for more blood and they got their victim in the form of Aparajith before lunch. He was holed out to Sharath off Shreyas and the visitors were reduced to 32 for 4.
Scoreboard: Karnataka 1st innings 290. Tamil Nadu 1st innings 274. Karnataka 2nd innings (overnight 247/4): Pandey (not out) 56, Binny c Gandhi b Rangarajan 77. Extras (nb-5, w-7, b-5, lb-3) 20. Total (5 wkts decl, 75.5 ovs) 351. FoW: 4-233, 5-351. Bowling: Kaushik 17-4-82-1, Balaji 14-2-68-0, Mohammed 19-3-66-1, M Rangarajan 20.5-2-96-2, Indrajith 3-1-16-0, Aparajith 2-0-15-0. Tamil Nadu 2nd innings: Gandhi lbw Kumar R 1, Mukund c Pandey b Sreenath 16, Aparajith c Sharath b Gopal 13, Karthik (run out) 1, Indrajith lbw b Binny 12, Prasanna c Samarth b Kumar 15, Shanker c Uthappa b Kumar 8, Rangarajan c Kazi b Sreenath 10, Balaji lbw b Sreenath 0, Mohammed b Sreenath 0, Kaushik (not out) 0. Extras (b-4, lb-2) 6. Total (all out, 34.3 ovs) 82. FoW: 1-18, 2-18, 3-23, 4-32, 5-57, 6-59, 7-82, 8-82, 9-82, 10-82. Bowling: Vinay Kumar 8.3-3-20-3, Aravind 8-3-9-4, Sharath 8-3-20-0, Gopal 5-1-15-1, Binny 5-2-12-1.