Jharkhand’s Ishank Jaggi drives a ball off his backfoot while scoring an unbeaten 71 runs in the host team’s second innings in the plate group Ranji match against Jammu & Kashmir at Mecon stadium in Ranchi on Thursday. Picture by Prashant Mitra

Ranchi, Nov. 6: Jharkhand team’s lack of confidence in batting was exposed on the fourth and final day of their Ranji tie against Jammu and Kashmir as they settled for a tame draw instead of looking for an outright victory.

Consequently, Jharkhand earned three points for the first innings lead and the visitors went back with one point.

On the final day, the J&K team had set Jharkhand a target of 291 runs in 65 overs for an outright win. But the home team lost its captain and opening batsman Manish Vardhan for a duck. Manish had scored only one in the first innings.

However, things looked bright when the other opener Subroto Ghosh and young Ishank Jaggi started stroking the ball around the park. These two put on 147 runs for the second wicket when Ghosh (83) was trapped leg before by Sameer Khajuria. The team’s score was 147 then.

The run chase had lost steam during this partnership itself, and the mission for an outright victory was dropped finally after Saurabh Tiwary holed out for a first ball duck.

Debutant Ishank Jaggi impressed once again scoring 71 unbeaten runs. He had scored 58 runs in the first innings.

When Amir Hashmi walked in at the completion of the 50th over, the Jharkhand team decided to call off the chase though they had 15 mandatory overs left and the team’s score was 167 runs for the loss of three wickets.

The move prompted a veteran all-rounder to murmur “it requires a reliable line up and a big heart to chase runs”.

Earlier, resuming at the overnight score of 309 runs for seven wickets, the J&K second innings folded up for 366, with the last three wickets adding 66 valuable runs, which also questioned the home team’s bowling strength.