Our Sports Reporter
GUWAHATI: Opener Dhruv Shorey brought back Delhi on track after the side made an ordinary start against Assam in the Ranji Trophy tie at the ACA stadium here today. Rode on Dhruv's unbeaten knock of 139, Delhi put 271-7 in their first innings at stumps on day I.
Assam, in the morning, won the toss and invited Delhi to bat first. The decision looked perfect as visitors were once struggling and were reduced to 74-4. However Dhruv started to repair the damage from that point and he got good support from Vaibhav Rawal (43, 4X7) and Hrithik Shokeen (29, 4X1, 6X 2).
Assam today made a couple of changes in their playing XI which faced Saurashtra in the first game. Pacer Mrinmoy Dutta, who came into the team today, gave the first break to his team taking the wicket of opener Anuj Rawat (2). Captain Yash Dhul (22, 4X5) started his innings well but wasn't able to convert it into a big knock. The batter departed on team's total 55 giving a catch to Kunal Saikia on the bowling of Akash Sengupta. Mrinmoy and Mukhtar Hussain picked up two more wickets in the form of Nitish Rana (0) and Himmat Singh (3) which pushed Delhi to 74-4.
However Dhruv looked rock solid on the wicket and although his side lost wickets at the other end on regular intervals he didn't lose focus from his job. The batter contributed more than 50 percent of Delhi's first innings total on the opening day of the game and most of those runs came through off-side. Dhruv's unbeaten 139 runs came in 216 balls and he hit 15 boundaries. It was the eighth first-class century of his career.
During this knock the batter made two good partnerships with Vaibhav Rawal and Hrithik Shokeen. The fifth-wicket partnership between Dhruv and Vaibhav produced 103 runs from 143 balls and later Dhruv and Hrithik put another 55 runs on the seventh-wicket.
Vikash Mishra (25) was giving accompany to Dhruv when the day's play came to an end and the duo already added 35 runs on the unbeaten eighth-wicket.
Among the bowlers of Assam Mrinmoy Dutta (2-50), Akash Sengupta (2-65) and Siddharth Sarmah (2-36) bagged two wickets each, The other one was collected by Mukhtar Hussain (1-63).
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