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JP Yadav's leg-before-wicket dismissal at the stroke of tea on Thursday had the Railways in a bind. Yadav's was the seventh wicket to fall and the hosts were only leading by 59 runs. With the spectre of an innings defeat looming, the team's No.11 Shailender Gehlot, without wasting a second on tea and samosas hit the nets instantly.
Giving him throw downs was TP Singh, his batting coach of the day. "Don't go for shots. With soft hands try to play the ball in front of your pads," was the plea. Luckily for Gehlot, his batting prowess wasn't called for as the Railways managed to get through the mandatory quota overs without losing another wicket.
Minutes later the match was drawn and with it, Railways bagged a hard-fought point. In the end, it was a scramble to save the match. But starting off, the two overnight batsmen V Cheluvuraj and Sanjay Bangar had played out over 24 overs in the first session and were looking set to bat till lunch.
They had put together 94 runs for the second wicket by then. Bangar then edged one to slips and in a space of 15 minutes, Railways were four down.
Singh and Yere Goud were snared in the same over by Siddharth Trivedi. Then another sizable partnership of 72 between Cheluvuraj and M Suresh resurrected hopes. But Cheluvuraj, Suresh and Yadav walked back to the pavilion in quick time. Like his mentor Goud, Cheluvuraj thrives in playing out time and his 249-ball 73 went a long way in thwarting Gujarat.
Mahesh Rawat played out the rest of time in tandem with skipper Murali Kartik, before the latter was castled by Ishwar Choudhary. Talking about his knock Cheluvuraj said: "Today was my kind of situation. I'm not an attacking bat. I can bat out a match. We were only there to bat out sessions."
Kartik, though, was disappointed saying the Gujarat's first innings total was chaseable. "379 was gettable. So we need to up our performances in all the departments," he said.
Brief scores: Gujarat 379; Railways 221 & 246 for 8 in 109 overs (V Cheluvuraj 73, Maripurri Suresh 37, Mahesh Rawat 22 n.o.; Salil Yadav 2/44, Siddharth Trivedi 2/55, Ashraf Makda 2/53, Ishwar Choudhary 2/57)
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