Walunj brings Maha back in the match

Pune: Left-arm spinner Hitesh Walunj, playing only his second match, stopped visitors Jharkhand from running away with Day 1 honours on the first day of Ranji Trophy match at Gahunje on Friday.Captain Virat Singh got a hundred (108, 171b, 8x4s, 3x6s), but Walunj had the last laugh when he trapped him lbw about 20 minutes before close of play. Jharkhand were 292-5 at stumps. Maharashtra could heave a sigh of relief. For, captain Kedar Jadhav had won the toss and chose to field. They had to endure a wicketless post-lunch session too.Walunj showed patience in abundance to price out important wickets in the post-tea session. He ended with 24-3-76-3. He had Kumar Suraj (83, 156b, 11x4s, 1x6) caught in the deep, had left-handed Sourabh Tiwary for a golden duck with keeper Nikhil Naik taking a sharp catch and then lured Virat to play for a wrong line using round the wicket angle.Things would have been far more difficult for Maharashtra had Jharkhand lost fewer wickets. Pavan Shah had failed to catch Virat (90) at short-leg off Walunj in the 76th over. That didn’t prove costly either.“I bowled in the areas I was told by my skipper. I think my patience works for me to keep doing the same stuff for hours,” Walunj, who has replaced Satyajeet Bachhav in this season’s team, told TOI after the day’s play.Patience is the reason why Walunj is still playing cricket. “I have been playing for almost 15 years but it wasn’t easy to carry on (without a Ranji cap),” he said.Walunj said he was a part of Maharashtra’s 20-player core group just before the Covid pandemic. “But I couldn’t make it to the 15 or playing XI.”Despite winning an important toss, the hosts were without a wicket in the first hour of play as Pradeep Dadhe and Ashay Palkar were not up to the mark. Debutant pacer Ramkrishna Ghosh (son of former Maharashtra coach Shekhar Ghosh) did the job of choking runs. He started with three maidens and then conceded only four runs in the next two overs. That contributed to building the pressure. Palkar was the beneficiary from the other end.Openers Mohd Nazim (27) and Kumar Deobrat (31) edged to Naushad Shaikh and Jadhav - both in slips - respectively. However, Suraj and Virat didn’t let the momentum shift and frustrated the hosts. They added 145 runs for the third wicket in 265 balls before the former failed for the bait and holed out to long-on.Despite a haul of 8 wickets in the previous match, Walunj was brought in relatively late in the attack - in the 41st over of the day and then bowled almost unchanged. He used the angles well and didn’t err much in length.Batsman-cum-offie Siddhesh Veer proved a little costly (0-70 in 16 overs).
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