Aswin Crist helps Tamil Nadu take upper hand

Fine bowling by medium-pacer A Aswin Crist (3/47) helped Tamil Nadu take an upper hand by reducing Vidarbha to 206 for six on the third day of their Ranji Trophy quarterfinal cricket match here today.
In reply to Tamil Nadu's first innings total of 403, Vidarbha were struggling when the bails were taken off with Ravi Jangid unbeaten on 26.
The third day's play was called off after the fall of Urvesh Patel's (31) wicket.
Vidarbha still trail Tamil Nadu by 197 runs with only four wickets in hand.
Earlier, Vidarbha resumed at an overnight score of nine without loss but were jolted by 20-year-old Crist, who removed opener Faiz Fazal (15) and one down batsman Ganesh Satish (0) off successive deliveries in the 11th over of the innings.

Vidarbha could never recover from that stage, as none of the batsmen stayed long enough in the middle. Although Sachin Katariya (42), skipper S Badrinath (40) and Shalabh Shrivastava (39) did get the start but all of them failed to convert those into big scores.

Badrinath and Katariya added 72 runs for the third wicket before the latter coupled with Shrivastava to add another 39 runs for the fourth wicket.
P Parmeshwaran removed Badrinath, while Crist saw off Shrivastava to reduce Vidarbha to 146 for five.
Laxmipathy Balaji then broke the threatening sixth wicket partnership between Jangid and Urvesh at the end of the day's play.

Brief scores:
Tamil Nadu: 403
Vidarbha: 206 for six in 90.4 overs (Sachin Katariya 42, S Badrinath 40; A Aswin Crist 3/47).