He came into this match after a two-month lay-off, and with an eye on the selection for the Sri Lanka series. After the first day’s play between Baroda and Bengal in the Ranji Trophy Super League, Irfan Pathan made his presence felt, carving out an uncharacteristically guarded knock to bail his team out of trouble on a lively Eden Gardens wicket.

Picking up the pieces after the Bengal pacers reduced Paras Mhambrey’s boys to 146 for 6 after making Baroda bat, Irfan walked in when his side was on the brink, and scored a calm and composed unbeaten 42 to swing the match back into equilibrium.

At the end of Day One, Baroda were interestingly placed on 219 for 6 — riding piggyback on the all-important seventh-wicket partnership of 73 runs between Irfan (42 runs off 107 balls) and stumper Pinal Shah (41 off 96 balls).

On a pitch that had a pronounced tinge of green, Sourav Sarkar (2 for 50) and Bengal skipper Laxmi Ratan Shukla (2 for 38) kept a tight line and consistently unleashed nippy inswingers. And the Baroda top-order simply crumbled, courtesy a combination of over-adventurous stroke-play and some incisive seam bowling.

Coming from a long break, Irfan curbed his shot-making instincts, hung on for a painstakingly long phase in the third session under a cloudy Eden sky, nurtured Shah in the course of the 73-run rescue act, and chose his strokes judiciously to remain unbeaten at stumps.

Even as Irfan batted out the last session on a track where the ball moved throughout the day, the early collapse left the Baroda innings far too heavily dented for Connor Williams & Co to feel secured. Interestingly, while Bengal’s hero from the last match Ranadeb Bose failed miserably today, it was the duo of Sarkar and Shukla that did all the damage.

... contd.