Kolkata: Left-handed opener Abhishek Raman struck his maiden first-class hundred as Bengal scored 306/5 against Himachal Pradesh in their first home match of the season in the Ranji Trophy Group D fixture here on Wednesday.
Playing in his fifth first-class match, the 24-year-old looked in sublime form during his 176-run-knock that was laced with 29 boundaries. He occupied the crease for nearly six hours to help Bengal recover from a jittery 44/2 after they were put in to bat.
In-form teenager Prithvi Shaw slammed his fourth century in five first-class matches to help Mumbai reach 264/6 against Odisha at stumps.
The 17-year old, who has been talked of highly ever since he made his debut in the last season, struck a breezy 105 studded with 18 boundaries and added 136 valuable runs for the second wicket with experienced Ajinkya Rahane (49).
So far among the Indian batsmen, only one player had more first-class hundreds before the age of 18 — maestro Sachin Tendulkar who had seven three figure scores.
In New Delhi, Suresh Raina failed with the bat yet again as Delhi put up an impressive bowling effort on a helpful track to restrict Uttar Pradesh to 270/8. At Rajkot, Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara roared back to form with his 42nd first-class hundred as Saurashtra scored 341/5 at stumps in a Group B Rencounter against Jharkhand.
Ranji SCORES
GROUP A
At New Delhi: Hyderabad 272/3 in 87 overs (Tanmay Agarwal 41, Akshath Reddy 69, B. Sandeep 64*, Ambati Rayudu 88*, Manish Rao 2/49) vs Railways.
At New Delhi: Uttar Pradesh 270/8 in 84 overs (Mohammed Said 83, Akshdeep Nath 59, Upendra Yadav 48*, Ishant Sharma 2/27, Navdeep Saini 2/37) vs Delhi.
At Pune: Maharashtra 245 in 55 overs (N. Shaikh 69, Rahul Tripathi 120, Vinay Kumar 6/59, Pavan Deshpande 2/38) vs Karnataka 117 for no loss in 31 overs (R. Samrath 47*, Mayank Agarwal 50*).
Group B
At Rajkot: Saurashtra 341/5 in 90 overs (Cheteshwar Pujara 125*, Prerak Mankad 85, Chirag Jani 40*, Ashish Kumar 3/50) vs Jharkhand.
At Valsad: Gujarat 236 in 84.1 overs (BH Merai 52, RH Bhatt 40, Piyush Chawla 36, A. Mishra 4/63) vs Haryana zero for one in three overs.
At Trivandrum: Kerala 219 in 76 overs (Sanju Samson 112, Arun Karthik 35, Parvez Rasool 6/70) vs J&K 16 for no loss in 12 overs.
Group C
At Bhubaneswar: Mumbai 264/6 in 90 overs (Prithvi Shaw 105, Ajinkya Rahane 49, Siddesh Lad 33, Basant Mohanty 2/43, Biplab Samantaray 2/26) vs Odisha.
At Vizag: Madhya Pradesh 219/5 in 89 overs (Shubham Sharma 60, Harpreet Singh Bhatia 47*, Prithvi Raj 3/35) vs Andhra.
At Vadodara: Baroda 304/5 in 90 overs (Vishnu Solanki 116, Abhijit Karambelkar 75*, Gurinder Singh 2/61) vs Tripura.
Group D
At Nagpur: Vidarbha 259/3 in 90 overs (Faiz Fazal 128, SR Ramaswamy 55, Wasim Jaffer 34, Khalid Ahmad 2/62) vs Services.
At Raipur: Chhattisgarh 238 in 73 overs (Jatin Saxena 52, S. Ruikar 50, Vishal Singh 76, Manpreet Singh 4/41, Vinay Choudhary 3/56, Sandeep Sharma 2/41) vs Punjab 57/1 in 14 overs (Jiwanjot Singh 40*).
At Kolkata: Bengal 306/5 in 86 overs (Abhishek Raman 176, Manoj Tiwary 78*) vs Himachal.
