Bengal defeat J'khand by five wickets

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

Set to score 202, the Bengal batsmen led by inform batsman 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 and Jhunjunwalla for two runs apiece 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 on four and six respectively.

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

Sumit Panda was the only other Jharkhand batsmen to show some resistance scoring 24.

Jharkhand was at 202 for nine in their allotted 50 overs.

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

Brief scores: Jharkhand : 202 for nine in 50 overs (Rajiv Kumar 63,Summit Panda 24, Randeb Bose two for 37,S S Paul two for 31, S S Singh two for 28 ) Bengal : 204 for five in 47.3 overs (W Saha 85,Monaj Tiwary 69,Mihir Diwakar two for 13) UNI