A captain's knock from Williams shores up Baroda

A gritty hundred by Baroda opener and skipper Connor Williams saw the Ranji champions reach a respectable 265 for six against Rest of India at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Ground in Nagpur on Saturday.

Baroda, asked to bat by Rest of India captain VVS Laxman, did not get off to the happiest of starts. This after VVS Laxman had put down an easy catch at second slip offered by Williams off the bowling of Tinu Yohannan. Opener Satyajit Parab though was not as lucky being dismissed by Orissa and India medium-pacer Debashish Mohanty when he was on 21.

Former India stumper Nayan Mongia , who walked in, lent solid support to his skipper. The partnership between the two yielded 71 runs in less than 20 overs before Mongia (31) fell to Sarandeep Singh.

After this, Rishishkesh Parab was run-out for one while veteran batsman Tushar Arothe too did not last for too long.

Himnashu Jadhav though was determined to fight it out. The Williams- Jadhav partnership was the most fruitful of the innings yielding 124 runs. Williams also crossed his landmark during this stand. Jadhav hit five fours and two sixes in his innings of 43 before falling to Sarandeep Singh.

The dismissal of Umang Patel, out hit wicket at the end, was totally unnecessary. This meant that, all in all, the honours were just about even at the end of the first day of the four-day match.

Rest of India, the defending champions, though would have done much better if they had held on to their catches. Sarandeep Singh, the former Indian off-spinner, and Yohannan were the pick of the bowlers on the day suffered badly because of poor catching.

Williams, who is batting on 133, and Rakesh Patel, batting on zero would be hoping to stretch the score to beyond 400. Baroda definitely will need all the runs against a Rest of India batting line-up led by the classy VVS Laxman.