Bengaluru: Shreyas Gopal’s gritty 87 and Srinivas Sharath’s unbeaten 74 guided Karnataka to a respectable total of 264 for nine on day one of their semi-final against Saurashtra at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium here on Thursday.
Karnataka had a disastrous start as they were reduced to 30 for four, but the hosts bounced back well, courtesy the fifth wicket partnership (106) between skipper Manish Pandey (62) and Shreyas. Karnataka had lost their opener Ravikumar Samarth in the very first over.
Saurashtra’s left-arm pacer Jaydev Unadkat struck again to dismiss KV Siddharth. As star batsmen Mayank Agarwal (2), another victim of Unadkat’s superb opening spell, and Karun Nair (9) fell cheaply, the onus of repairing the innings fell on captain Manish who found an able ally in Shreyas.
While Manish took the responsibility of keeping the scoreboard ticking by hitting boundaries, Shreyas held fort at the other end. Post lunch, Manish, however, fell prey to Unadkat but not before scoring a blistering half-century. Shreyas then joined hands with Sharath and the duo put on 97 runs for the sixth wicket.
Once Shreyas was bowled by Kamlesh Makwana, then followed a steady procession of wickets. K. Gowtham (2), Vinay Kumar (1) and Abhimanyu Mithun (4) were dismissed in a span of 10 overs.
