Vineet Saxena bolsters Railway in Ranji match

Kolkata:Vineet Saxena came up with a gritty 65 as Railways crawled to 191 for 5 in their first innings on the opening day of the four-day Ranji Trophy Elite Group 'A' match against Bengal here today.

Electing to bat on winning the toss, Railways lost their two openers - captain Sanjay Bangar (21) and Amit Pagnis (9) - early, before Saxena and S Khanolkar (35) steadied the innings with a 80-run third wicket partnership on a docile track at the Eden Gardens.

Yere Goud (18 batting) and Raja Ali (8 batting) were in the middle at draw of stumps as the visitors batted painstakingly slow, scoring marginally above two runs per over.

Bangar's lacklustre run with the bat continued as he departed after a 52-minute stay when he was adjudged leg before to an incoming delivery from pacer S S Paul, who returned figures of 2/39.

Laxmi Ratan Shukla got rid of Pagnis in the next over, as Railways seemed to be in trouble at 30/2.

However, Saxena (251b, 286m, 7x4) and Khanolkar saw the hosts to 88 without any further loss at lunch, and took the score past the 100 mark in the seventh over of the post-lunch session.