Baby’s day out

Seventeen-year-old Tanmay’s 72 not out and his team’s score of 209/6 — chasing Delhi’s first innings score of 299 — meant his inning had the potential to upstage his memorable performance at the junior. Besides impressive with his numerical contribution, he also showed that he had a mature head and calm nerves. His delectable drives between point and cover region, a rock-solid defence and the judgment to play each-ball-on-merit made him the top performer of the day.

The day started with Delhi getting all out of 299 in the first innings with Aakash Chopra scoring 150. Piyush Chawla got two wickets in five balls and RP picked two to mop up the tail.

Ashish Nehra and Ishant Sharma brought them back in the match with two strikes each; At 125/5, Praveen Kumar, going in to bat, knew the fight for two points was on. Tanmay was standing unruffled at the other end as the UP all-rounder played his natural game. He entertained with some lusty hitting as the visitors quickly closed the gap.

Praveen went after Rahul Sanghvi, hitting him for three sixes as he raced to his 50 in cavalier fashion. His 58-ball knock also contained five boundaries. Praveen lived dangerously though and Delhi helped his cause. After having survived a strong caught behind appeal off Sanghvi, Praveen got a lease of life at 18 from the same bowler, who failed to latch on to a caught and bowled chance.

But the turning point of the match, so far, was Bhatia dropping Praveen at deep backward point. He took off late and reacted sluggishly to a slash that was dipping as it came towards him.

On the third day morning, Delhi’s work is cut out. They want early wickets and few more fielding mishaps would see them conceding the lead.

Brief scores: Delhi 299 (Aakash Chopra 150, Virat Kohli 42; Praveen Kumar 4/62, RP Singh 2/96, Piyush Chawla 2/64) vs UP 207/5 (Tanmay Srivastav 72 not out, Praveen Kumar 54, Rohit Prakash 39; Ashish Nehra 2/76, Ishant Sharma 2/51).