Dhanbad defeated Ranchi, while West Singhbhum handed Hazaribagh a 101-run drubbing on Day Three of the senior inter-district (Elite) cricket tournament for HP Bodhanwala Trophy on Friday.
Opting to bat first at Telco Ground, Dhanbad overcame some early blows to consolidate and post a challenging score of 210 runs for the loss of nine wickets in their stipulated quota of overs.
The coal capital's innings was built mainly around the batting efforts of wicketkeeper Subroto Ghosh who scored a patient 80 runs from 125 balls (8x4).
The right hander stitched a 30-run partnership with Shashi Kumar to steady Dhanbad's ship ' after the wickets of Manish Vardhan (8 runs), Shashi Kumar (26 runs) and Shashim Rathore (1 run) in quick succession ' and later added 57 runs with skipper Shahbaz Nadeem to lead his team to a respectable total.
In reply, the Ranchi team stuttered from the start of their chase before crumbling for 178 runs. Barring opener Siddharth Raj Sinha who notched 50 runs (76 balls, 7x4), none of the other Ranchi batsmen had any answers to the Dhanbad bowlers led by skipper Nadeem. While Nadeem, Amit Mishra, Sujit Roy and Sashim Rathore picked up two wickets each, Nilmani Jha and Ibnay Hussain Khan scalped one victim each.
Elsewhere, West Singhbhum notched a mammoth 313 runs in 50 overs, before shooting Hazaribagh out for 212 in 48.3 overs. Sheikh Md Shah Rukh was the star of West Singhbhum notching an unbeaten 100 runs (84 balls, 6x4, 5x6) to break the backbone of Hazaribagh's bowling attack.
