'Ton a reward for my hard work'

Chennai: Walking back unconquered on a greenish wicket against a decent pace attack, Abhinav Mukund's smiling face reflected a lot of satisfaction. The TN opener has roared back to form with a patient century, besides putting his subdued start to the Ranji season behind him.

“I felt I applied myself well in the middle. It's a just reward for whatever I have worked on in the recent past. I am glad that I could make it count today,“ said Abhinav who scored his 19th first-class hundred on Thursday .

In M. Vijay's company, Abhinav has stitched many a memorable opening partnership for Tamil Nadu and the duo put on 97 runs on the opening day against Saurashtra.

The left-handed batsman said their focu was to leave the balls that were pitched outside the off-stump.

“We had to nullify whatever initial advan tages the p i t c h offered to them. I think t h e duty of the openers is to play out, at least, the first hour. Vijay and I did that well. We looked to rotate the strike as much as possible and being a left-right combina tion made it easier or us. It was the way we used to play a couple of years ago and I am glad that we could recreate that,“ said Abhinav.

W h i l e Saurashtra skip per Jaydev Shah said the pitch “was on the slower side“ and developed into a batsmanfriendly track“, Abhinav reckoned that the wicket had “a lot to offer for e bowlers“. the bowlers“.

“I reckon they could have bowled much more into the stumps or probably on the stumps, that's what we would have done.

Definitely there was a good bounce and the ball carried to the keeper on more than one occasion. So the runs we scored have a lot of value. I think we are in a pretty good position having posted a decent total on a not-so-fast outfield,“ added Abhinav.

Shah said Saurashtra would look to keep the hosts under 500.

“The wicket has grass but it's not helping the bowlers at all. We will try to get them out as early as possible. We also have a good batting line-up to match our opponents,“ said Shah.