Ranji Trophy 2022-23 Live: Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, and Karnataka start strong in the quarter-finals

The Ranji Trophy 2022-23 season is in its latter half now where the knockout matches are being played. The quarter-final matches between the eight qualified teams began today morning. All the quarter-final matches are scheduled to be played from 31st January 2023 to 4th February 2023.

The quarter-final lineup was decided as follows.

MATCH TEAMS VENUE
1st Quarter-Final Jharkhand vs Bengal Kolkata
2nd Quarter-Final Andhra Pradesh vs Madhya Pradesh Indore
3rd Quarter-Final Saurashtra vs Punjab Rajkot
4th Quarter-Final Uttarakhand vs Karnataka Bengaluru

At the time of writing, four of these eight teams were ahead in the race to reach the semi-finals as they had started the match on a high note.

In the first match between Jharkhand and Bengal, Bengal had Jharkhand struggling at 136/7, thanks to a brilliant bowling spell from Akash Deep and Mukesh Kumar. For Jharkhand, number 3 batter Kumar Suraj was not out at 69.

In the match between Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, Andhra lost the openers cheaply after getting set but Ricky Bhui and Karan Shinde stabilized the innings as Andhra’ score at the time of writing was 157/2. Captain Hanuma Vihari was retired hurt at 16. For MP, both the wickets were taken by Gaurav Yadav.

Punjab was on the verge of finishing Saurashtra’s innings cheaply due to sensational bowling from Mayank Markande who had taken 4 wickets till the time of writing this article. Baltej Singh and Siddarth Kaul had also taken 2 wickets each as Saurashtra’s score was 205/8. Snell Patel scored a solid 70 runs but did not get any support from other batters.

In the fourth quarter-final match between Uttarakhand and Karnataka, Uttarakhand’s batters were seen reeling against magical bowling from Muralidhara Venkatesh who completed his fifer. Only four Uttarakhand batters scored in double digits as their team seemed in deep trouble at 109/8.