Ranji Trophy: Gautam Gambhir leads Delhi's fightback against Karnataka

Courtesy: PTI

New Delhi: Veteran Gautam Gambhir waged a lone war for Delhi in their Group A Ranji Trophy fifth round match against Karnataka at the KSCA ground, Alur in Bengaluru.

In reply to Karnataka's massive first innings total of 649, Delhi made 301 with Gambhir scoring 144 runs from 244 balls with the help of 22 fours. He got fleeting supports from Dhruv Shorey (64) and skipper Rishabh Pant (41).

The 36-year-old finally got out in the 87th over with Delhi's score at 286. Delhi could add another 15 runs to all out at 301.

This was his second hundred of the 2017 Ranji season, after 137 against Assam in October.

Despite the opener's brilliant show, the visitors still got a first innings deficit of 348 runs.

For Karnataka, Abhimanyu Mithun took a five-wicket haul, while Stuart Binny got two scalps.

Earlier in the match, after winning the toss, Karnataka rode on hundreds from Mayank Agarwal (176) and Binny (118) to post the mammoth total. Shreyas Gopal contributed with 92 runs.

Gambhir last played for India in a Test match against England at Rajkot in November 2016.

He has played 58 Tests, 147 ODIs and 37 T20Is, scoring 4154, 5238 and 932 runs respectively. He has 20 international hundreds, with 11 of those coming in ODIs.