Ranji Trophy quarters: Gujarat cruising, Saurashtra in driver's seat

Valsad (Gujarat), Feb 22:  Chintan Gaja, who had scored a fifty as Gujarat posted a mammoth 602/8d in the first innings, picked up five wickets as Goa were bowled out for 173. While Goa skipper Amit Verma scored 56, he hardly found any support as Gujarat opened up a big 429-run lead in the first innings.

The Parthiv Patel-led side then chose to bat again and ended the day at 158/1, leading Goa by 587 runs, with Samit Gohil batting on 70 and Bharag Merai scoring an unbeaten 49.

At the DRIEMS Ground in Cuttack, Nilkantha Das, Ishan Porel and Mukesh Kumar picked up three wickets each while Bengal secured a 82-run lead.

Odisha, at one stage were 135/1, but Bengal struck back, scalping three quick wickets before stumps on the second day and on the third day took off from where they had left to restrict Odisha to 250.

Bengal ended the day at 79/2 and extended their overall lead to 161 runs.

In Jammu, Karnataka scored 206 against Jammu and Kashmir after the match resumed following no play on the second day. While Auqib Nabi, Mujtaba Yousuf and Parvez Rasool scalped three wickets each, KV Siddharth's 76 and Manish Pandey's 37 helped Karnataka score 206.

Karnataka lost skipper Karun Nair early, but Siddharth and Pandey added 61 runs from 58 balls before the latter got out on Yousuf's bowling. Srinivas Sharath, who scored 26, and Siddharth then added 69 runs together to take Karnataka close to 150.

Jagadeesha Suchith then chipped in with 18 runs before Karnataka were all out for 206. In response, Jammu and Kashmir scored 88 runs for the loss of two wickets before the close of play.

In the Saurashtra versus Andhra quarterfinal in Ongole, Jaydev Unadkat and Dharmendrasinh Jadeja scalped four and three wickets respectively as Saurashtra bowled out Andhra for 136 to secure a 283-run lead.

Before the close of play, Saurashtra scored 93 runs for the loss of two wickets and extended their overall lead to 376 runs.