Dhawan century puts Delhi in command against Vadodara

A superb unbeaten century by Shikhar Dhawan and his two century partnerships for the second and third wickets with G Chabra and Rajat Bhatai put Delhi in command on the opening day of the Ranji Trophy Super League Group B match against Vadodara here today.

At close of play on the first day, Delhi had reached 300 for two with Dhawan on 122 and Rajat Bhatia on 70 holding the fort for the visitors.

In the morning, Delhi captain Akash Chopra won the toss and elected to bat on a flat pitch tailor made for batting. Delhi were without their India stars Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Virat Kohli, Ishant Sharma and Ashish Nehra all doing national duty against Australia, while Vadodara were missing Irfan Pathan with a knee injury and paceman Munaf Patel who was in the India squad presently taking on Australia.

Chopra and Dhavan opened the Delhi innings and the Delhi captain was off his blocks in a flash racing to 21 in just 18 balls with three glorious hits to the fence before pacer S Veragi struck clean bowling the Delhi captain with the total at 30.

After this wicket it was hard toil for the hosts as Dhavan along with G Chabra stuck to their task easily tackling the Vadodara bowlers putting on 134 runs for the second wicket before Chabra got an ball from M Varoha which cut back from outside the off stump to wrap his pads with the batsman plumb in front of the wicket. Chabra made 65 from 139 balls with nine hits to the fence.

Rajat Bhatia, the Delhi IPL star then joined Dhawan and the two dominated the Varodara bowling with both remaining unbeaten when stumps were called with the score reading 300 for two. Dhawan had completed his century and was batting on 122 which came in 379 minutes and after facing 247 deliveries. His knock was studded with 12 boundaries. At the other end Bhatai was batting on 70 of 141 deliveries with seven hits to the fence. The two have put on an unbeaten 136 runs for the third wicket so far.

Scoreboard: Delhi first innings: A Chopra b S Veragi 21 S Dhawan not out 122 G Chabra lbw b M Vahora 65 R Bhatia not out 70 Extras: (b 6, lb 9, w 2, nb 5) 22 Total: (2 wickets; 90 overs) 300 Fall of wickets: 1-30, 2-164 Bowling: S Veragi 10-0-34-1 A Argal 12-1-53-0 M Vahora 17-5-50-1 Y Pathan 30-5-71-0 R Pawar 21-0-77-0

-- (UNI) -- 03SPB1.xml

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