Railways' experienced campaigner Mahesh Rawat proved to be the thorn in the flesh for Bengal as he stood tall with an unbeaten century to lead the visiting team's recovery on day two of the Ranji Trophy quarterfinal here today.
Propelled by Rawat's unbeaten 105 in an undefeated 191-run partnership with Arindam Ghosh (78 batting) Railways ended day two at 233/5, trailing Bengal by only 84 runs with five wickets in hand.
In reply to Bengal's challenging first innings total of 317, Railways were tottering at 42/5 after losing three wickets for four runs just after lunch when Ashoke Dinda was firing on all cylinders with veteran Shib Shankar Paul giving a good back-up.
But the Railways wicketkeeper-batsman, counter-attacked Dinda with six successive classical boundaries before turning around the match for the visitors.
The flurry of boundaries against Bengal's strike bowler derailed the home side and it failed to recover from the slide. Luck too went in favour of Rawat, who survived a run-out scare when he was on 28.
Barring this, it was a chance-less knock by Rawat and he executed his shots to perfection. Bengal's bowling was reduced to a two-pace attack in Dinda and Paul with Sourav Sarkar lacking in intensity.
In no time, Rawat raced to his ninth 50-plus score from 10 matches this season, notching up his 28th first-class half century in 48 balls.
Such was his domination that Rawat scored 78 runs in (18) fours and sixes in his 125-ball unbeaten innings. The batsman has over 700 runs under his belt at an average of over 70 this season.
In local-lad Ghosh, Rawat found a perfect ally as the two leading run-getters of Railways staged yet another recovery act.
