India discard Naman Ojha’s deplorable on-field behaviour stopped proceedings for 20 minutes but couldn’t stop Delhi from thrashing Madhya Pradesh by 75-run margin in a group B encounter of Vijay Hazare Trophy on Thursday, PTI reported.
Batting first, Delhi scored 284/8 riding on Nitish Rana’s 98-ball-107 studded with 10 fours and three sixes. Having already lost focus due to their captain’s outbursts, MP could manage only 209 in 42.4 overs as part-time off-spinner Lalit Yadav picked up 5/25.
Delhi now have 22 points from seven games and look good to qualify for the quarter-finals of the National championship. The incident that marred the proceedings happened in the 28th over of the innings.
Left-hander Rana, then on 26, played a sweep shot off left-arm spinner Rameez Khan and the fielder at square leg took a catch. The MP players started celebrating as Rana stood his ground.
Umpire Rajeev Godara then walked up to square leg umpire Navdeep Singh and after discussion asked for referral from the third umpire (match referee in this case).
After watching the feed, match referee Nitin Goel ruled not out after which Ojha lost his temper. He wagged his finger at Godara in an angry outburst, questioning his competence as first-class umpire. Match referee Goel had to enter the field as proceedings were halted for close to 20 minutes after which match started again.
Ojha might get some strict sanctions for bringing the game to disrepute as Goel is expected to submit a detailed report. Once the game resumed, Rana duly completed his hundred and Dhruv Shorey (67) added 147 runs for the third wicket.
Earlier, skipper Gautam Gambhir (41) and Unmukt Chand (41) added 89 runs for the opening stand to provide a platform for Shorey and Rana. While chasing, MP were never in the game as pitch got slower and Lalit bowled wicket to wicket to end up with maiden five wicket haul.
All the three matches in the Elite Group A were washed out due to rain. There were three clashes – Baroda versus Himachal Pradesh (at Alur), Goa versus Punjab (at Alur) and Karnataka versus Railways (at Bengaluru) – which were scheduled – but neither of the games were complete. All the teams shared two points each.
Brief Scores:
Delhi 284/8 in 50 overs (Nitish Rana 107, Dhruv Shorey 67) beat MP 209 in 42.4 overs (Venkatesh Iyer 53, Lalit Yadav 5/25) Delhi won by 75 runs.
Odisha 197 in 49.2 overs (Biplab Samantray 62, Jaydev Unadkat 3/39) beat Saurashtra 145 (Sheldon Jackson 40, Gobind Poddar 3/33) Odisha won by 52 runs.
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