Rlys chime in with a brand new label

For coach Vinod Sharma, this Diwali will be much more sweeter than it had ever been. In fact, his cups of joy should be overflowing now that his captain Abhay Sharma and teammates have presented him with another sparkling gift — the Irani Trophy — this festival. The Railways, the worthy and deserving winners on their maiden appearance, couldn’t have asked for more.

For the record, the Railways — they needed 243 in 90 overs on the final day — wrested the trophy from the Rest of India, the winners last three seasons, after a fine unbeaten 87 (2×6, 7×4) from Yere Goud and his unbroken stand of 60 for the sixth wicket with Shreyas Khanolkar — both heroes with a century each to their credit against the West Indians in a warm-up game at Pune last week. Railways won the match with a lot of spare as they made 244 for five.

SCOREBOARD

Rest of India (1st Innings): 266 Railways (1st Innings): 316 Rest of India (2nd Innings): 292 Railways (2nd Innings): JP Yadav lbw Yohanan 25; A Pagnis c&B Sarandeep 15; A Sharma c Dahiya b Lahiri 30; Y Goud (not out) 87; J Martin c Dahiya b Yohanan 27; Raja Ali c (sub) b Patel 29; S. Khanolkar (not out) 18; Extras (b-3, lb-1, nb-3, w-6) 13 Total (For 5 wkts, 70.2 overs): 244 Fall of wickets: 1-27, 2-45, 3-98, 4-139, 5-184. Bowling: T Yohanan 19-5-56-2, I Pathan 6-0-23-0, S Singh 23-2-81-1, T Patel 9.2-1-32-1, S Lahiri 10-1-29-1, R Gavaskar 1-0-2-0, Y Singh 1-0-10-0, A Chopra 1-0-7-0

Despite some hiccups in the morning — they lost well-set JP Yadav for 25 and Abhay Sharma for 30 — Goud and Khanolkar saw that the Railways did not lose any further wickets to romp home. Some exquisite shots from Goud — he hit a six each of Lahiri and Sarandeep — and a lusty 29 (1×6, 5×4) from left-hander Raja Ali saw Railways cruise along nicely even after the latter had departed trying to accelerate the scoring.

Both Abhay Sharma and Vinod Sharma admitted that the turning point of the match was JP Yadav’s spell of six wickets yesterday. Giving full credit to the all-arounder, Abhay said the Rest of India missed a left-arm bowler. Skipper Yuvraj admitted the missing link even as he said that it was their middle-order collapse in the first innings that proved costly.