da jogodeouro： After piling up 394 in the first innings Andhra had Karnatakastruggling on 83/3 to hold the whiphand at stumps on the second day oftheir Cooch Behar Trophy South Zone league match at the VisakhapatanamSteel Plant stadium on Thursday
Natarajan Sriram22-Sep-2000After piling up 394 in the first innings Andhra had Karnatakastruggling on 83/3 to hold the whiphand at stumps on the second day oftheir Cooch Behar Trophy South Zone league match at the VisakhapatanamSteel Plant stadium on Thursday.Resuming on the second day at 281 for 6, Venugopal Rao lost Mohd Faiqwith the score at 294. Manoj Sai joined Venugopal in the middle andthe two put on a useful 40 runs for the eight wicket. Venugopal wasthe chief scorer during the partnerships that ensued on the second dayand before long proceeded to complete a well deserved century. Playinga typical captain’s knock, he took the team nearly past the 400 runmark, when he himself fell. With the score at 394, Venugopal was thelast man to be dismissed after a fighting 130 off 223 balls.In reply, Karnataka started in a circumspect manner with openers SudirRao (22) and Bharat Chipli (18) adding 37 runs in 18.2 overs. Rao wasthe first to go, when he was castled by GS Rao. Then Deepak Chougulejoined Chipli, but Chipli himself did not last long. He departed afterbeing caught by Manoj Sai off Venugopal Rao with only 56 runs on theboard. This brought in skipper C Raghu to the centre and in thecompany of Chougule he took the score to 75. GS Rao pushed Karnatakafurther on the back foot when he shattered the defences of Chougule.But Raghu and AK Bafna saw Karnataka safely through to stumps withoutany further hiccups.