Santosh & Fatima frustrate Andhra

With a dogged 91 run partnership for the 9th wicket with southpaw [Fatima Reddy] the Hyderabad skipper Santosh Yadav saved the match for Hyderabad, and denying hosts Andhra the most important first innings lead. Hyderabad's top-order batsmen threw away their wickets with some atroshes strokes when the team needed them to stay put at the placid battin track at the ECIL gound.

Hyderabad resumed its innings from the overnight score of 66 for 1 in 43 overs. First to go this morning was Karthik Ramaswamy attempting a needless run, Things looked settled when left-hander Anirudh Singh and Aditya Agarwal were batting. A sudden rush of blood saw the former holed outby Shahabuddin at square-leg when he tried to sweep Balaji Krishna Singh until then he was batting beautifully and looked like he would bat through the day. He was soon followed by Agarwal when also tried to sweep Venugopala Rao to be gleefully caught by tall Shahabuddin at square-leg, A terrible mis-understanding saw Arjun Yadav being run out after Santosh Yadav called for a run and later sending the batsman by the time Arjun could regain the crease the damage was already done. Just about 10 minutes to lunch Hyderabad lost yet another wicket this time it of Mohd. Faiz Ahmed clean bowled by Venugopala Rao.

At Lunch Hyderabad were struggling to avoid the disgrace of Follow-On. from a position of strength at 90/1 they lost 5 wickets for the addision of 39 runs, to read lunch time score of 129 for 6 in 78 overs. Santosh on [ 5 ] and Amresh Kumar on [ 0 ].

After lunch both Santosh and Amresh tried to occupy the crease as long as possible, but the visitors had other ideas of dislodging the pair in quick time to make sure they get a first innings lead. However Andhra met with the success of dislodging the wickets of Amresh Kumar off the bowling of Sahahabuddin operating from the Pavilion end at 145 for 7 in the 89.1 st over.

The last recognised batsman in Mohd. Ghouse joined Santosh, but Ghouse disappointed every one present here with an atrocious shot off skipper Ram Mohan to be caught at mid-on [a skier]. At this point defeat was staring at the face of Hyderabad with another minimum of 30 overs to be gone in the match and the score being 146 for 8 in 92.2 overs. But skipper Santosh Yadav found an able partner [ FATIMA REDDY ] to support him and to frustrate the opposition of any further success. these two batted through till Tea time with the score being 182/8 in 105 overs, still 30 minutes of play and a minimum of 15 mandatory overs to be played.

In the last 60 minutes Andhra bowled 18 overs, in the penultimate over [ 16.3rd ] the gallant innings of Fatima Reddy came to an end when he was adjudged lbw by umpire Narasimha off the bowling of Venugopala Rao. The match was still in balance as the lesser known last Hyderabad batsman [ Nagaraju ] walked in to play the remaing 3 balls of Venugopapa Rao's over with six fielders crouching him around, Nagaraju managed to play the first ball with the bat and well-left the next two to end the penultimate over of the match, at the other end Santosh Yadav faced the last 6 crucial balls which seperated both the teams from 5 and 3 points at the fall of a wicket.

However, Santosh played the over with ease much to the delight of spectators and of course the host team members. Santosh was at the wicket for 268 minutes and 69.4 overs of which he faced 217 balls and remained unconquered for a Match Saving 68 with the aid of 8 hits to the boundry line. Fatima Reddy's tenure of 42.1 overs at the wicket in 152 minutes got him 27 runs in facing 116 balls with a lone 4. and his association with Santosh Yadav contributed 91 runs.