da bwin： Orissa beat Assam by 51 runs at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta earliertoday
Sakyasen Mittra05-Dec-2000Orissa beat Assam by 51 runs at the Eden Gardens in Calcutta earliertoday. A few days ago the coach of the Bengal team Palash Nundy wassaying that Orissa is the team of the future from the East. Hecouldn’t have made a better statement. Debashish Mohanty and his teammates put up a thoroughly professional display to outplay Assam in theRanji Trophy one-day encounter.Batting first after being put in Orissa totalled 249 for seven intheir 50 overs. They did so, after being reduced to 94 for the loss offour wickets in the 23rd over. A fifth wicket partnership of 123 runsin 139 balls runs between Pravanjan Mullick and P Jayachandra took thegame away from Assam. Mullick who scored an unbeaten 83 in 119 ballsshowed a lot of common sense while batting. He had six fours, alldrives in front of the wicket, on both sides. Jayachandra, who wasdropped by wicket keeper Vinayak Samant when on 14 had 52 beforeholing out to Parag Das at mid wicket. Both, helped by some shoddyfielding from the Assam team ran well during their partnership. As forAssam, left-arm medium pacer Gautam Dutta and Javed Zaman lookedimpressive. However, the others did not back them up.When Assam batted, Mohanty ripped through the top order. He had Paragdas caught at short leg in his very first over. Then, Ganesh Kumar wascaught behind by Gautam Gopal in Mohanty’s third over as he tried tosteer him. None of the Assam batsmen looked confident against him.Only Vinayak Samant managed to negotiate him with some degree ofcomfort. Samant was the top scorer for Assam with 84 in 115 balls witheight boundaries. The rest of the batsmen failed except for tailenderSunil Subramanium who made 27. The Assam innings folded for 199 in46.4 overs.Orissa, now have 4 points from two matches. Their last league matchagainst Bengal on December 10 will finally decide whether they willqualify for the Wills Trophy or not.