A third-day wicket is perhaps the best one for spinners to have a ball. On Monday, Piyush Chawla and Kulamani Parida shared six of the nine wickets to fall, with the former bowling Railways out for 200 and the latter restricting Uttar Pradesh to 118 for 4 at the Karnail Singh Stadium.

All strategies by fast bowlers, especially RP Singh, failed. They bowled short of good length and around the leg-stump line with all possible close-in fielders. But nothing worked.

Chawla, who had a single wicket to his name on Sunday, bagged four more to complete his 10th first-class five-wicket haul and, more importantly, the first of the season. But it was Bhuvnesh Kumar who opened the floodgates by castling Mahesh Rawat for 39 to break the 72-run stand between the Railways keeper and Yere Goud.

It had an immediate effect as Railways lost their last four wickets for 28 runs — the last three for mere 4 runs — all falling to Chawla. Raja Ali edged one to wicket-keeper Amir Khan, Murali Kartik and Anureet Singh handed Kaif easy catches at slip while Parida saw his off-stump disturbed by a googly. At the non-strikers’s end Goud, nursing a thumb injury, couldn’t accelerate, but remained unbeaten on 78 to stave off follow-on by just three runs.

For the hosts, Anureet Singh, who has been most successful pacer with 16 wickets this season from three matches, started the process. As has been the routine, there was a dropped catch-Parida grassed Srivastava in the very first over and he scored an unbeaten on 51-before two hard earned wickets came his way.

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