Rajasthan’s Ajay Kookna
Merai said that they were originally looking to chase the 497-run total. If we had scored 300 for 4, we could still be in the game, but we lost two extra wickets. Zubair scored 100 last year and won two Player-of-the-Match awards, so we are still hopeful of a good partnership of 100 runs, and then things can change,” he said.
“I have seen big totals being chased down here, so that was our goal. “The pitch has gone slower. There is some patch at the far end, so Kookna will be crucial for them on the last day. If we can deal with him, great,” the Railways captain added.
Railways finished the day at 305/6, still trailing by 192 runs behind the hosts’ massive first-innings total, despite a gritty 73-run (203 balls) resistance from captain Bhargav Merai. Refusing to surrender, Zubair Ali (18 not out off 33 balls) and Toufik Mondal (33 not out off 48 balls) stitched together an unbroken lower-order resistance through the rest of the evening.
“As the ball gets older, it stops turning, so the new ball helped us break the partnership,” he said after the day’s play. If I had stayed at the crease, we would surely have had the upper hand,” he said. JAIPUR: Left-arm spinner Ajay Kookna’s timely twin strikes broke two crucial partnerships to derail a solid Railways recovery, keeping Rajasthan firmly in the driver’s seat on Day Three at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium. Explaining the tactical shift after the break, Kookna pointed out that while they initially expected the pitch to offer help, it did not, so the target was simply to restrict runs by hitting consistent areas. The Railways skipper conceded that when that partnership broke, the momentum shifted. “Our partnership was very crucial. The pair narrowed the deficit, keeping alive hopes of avoiding the follow-on as the match heads into the final day.