Nagpur: Vidarbha Ranji team is on a roll. The Akshay Wadkar-led side has registered three out of three wins this season and are sitting atop Group B.
In their third match, Vidarbha produced a dominant performance thrashing Uttarakhand by a whopping 266 runs to take their points tally to 18, highest in the group. Vidarbha’s spinners – left arm orthodox Harsh Dubey and veteran Akshay Wakhare, playing his 100 First Class match — shared nine wickets between them as Uttarakhand succumbed to only 71, chasing an improbable 338.
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Wenesday 30 Oct. 2024
Dubey has been in the pink of his form as he took six wickets in the second innings out of which five were trapped in front. He ended the match with eight wickets. Wakhare, too, made it a memorable outing for himself taking three wickets, total seven in the match.
Resuming at 255 for six, Vidarbha managed to add 45 more runs and were all out for 300. The target of 338 was always a difficult task for Uttarakhand and their batting crumbled against quality Vidarbha spinners. With deteriorating fourth day wicket, Vidarbha started their bowling with Wakhare and the lanky spinner forced Uttarakhand opener Avneesh Sudha to stretch out of his crease only to get stumped by Wadkar.
From then on it was Dubey who stole the limelight with his straighter ones which foxed the batters. Dubey has now climbed to the top of the wicket-takers’ chart with 23 wickets from three matches while Wakhare has 16 in his bag. The platform for Vidarbha’s excellent win was laid by Yash Rathod, who made 135 and 56 in two innings. He was rightly named the player of the match.
Vidarbha will now return home to play their next two matches. They take on Himachal from Nov 6-9 at the VCA’s Civil Lines Stadium and then face Gujarat (Nov 13-16) at VCA’s Jamtha Stadium.
