Bengal defeat J'khand by 5 wickets

Bhubaneswar, Feb 19 (UNI) Bengal continued its winning spree by defeating Jharkhand in the one-day Ranji Trophy played at the Infosys ground today.

Set to score 202, the Bengal batsmen led by inform opener W Saha cruised home with five wickets to spare. Saha notched up 85 while Manoj Tiwary played a hard hitting knock of 69 in just 69 balls.

The Bengal batsmen were in no trouble despite losing openers S Das for 2, Jhunjunwalla for 2 and Rohan Gavaskar for 16 runs. Saha and Tiwary took their team close to victory before being dismissed for 85 and 69 runs respectively.

D Dasgupta and L R Shukla completed the formalities and were unbeaten for 4 and 6 respectively.

Mihir Diwakar of Jharkhand had a spell of 2 for 13 .Earlier, batting first, the Jharkhand lost quick wickets before Rajiv Kumar held one and up scoring 63 valuable runs. None of the other batsmen stayed at the crease as the team lost wickets in regular intervals.

Sumit Panda was the only other Jharkhand batsmen to shown some resistance scoring 24.Jharkhand was 202 for 9 in their allotted 50 over.

For Bengal Ranadeb Bose, S S Paul and S S Singh claimed two wickets each.

Brief scores: Jharkhand : 202 for 9 in 50 overs (Rajiv Kumar 63,Summit Panda 24, Randeb Bose 2 for 37,S S Paul 2 for 31, S S Singh 2 for 28 ) Bengal : 204 for 5 in 47.3 overs (W Saha 85,Monaj Tiwary 69,Mihir Diwakar 2 for 13) UNI DP LL RL HT2152