Calcutta: It won’t be too wrong to say that the game would have been more or less over for Bengal on the first day itself had Sudip Chatterjee and Wriddhiman Saha not stood up.

No wonder it was a difficult job against an in-form Karnataka pace attack and that too, on a pitch that offered seam and movement initially. Despite that, Sudip and Wriddhiman took the odds in their strides and kept on fighting. And their fight has certainly given Bengal some sort of a footing in their Group A opener at the Chinnaswamy.

Wriddhimanhas played such face-saving knocks for Bengal in the recent past. But for Sudip, the 145 runs he garnered against the holders during crisis certainly makes him a pillar of the Bengal batting line-up. 

By his own admission, his innings on Thursday would rank ahead of the 192 runs he got last December versus Baroda. “The 192 I scored might well be my highest score, but the knock that I played today would rank above that,” Sudip told The Telegraph from Bangalore.

“It carries more significance because the runs came when we were precariously placed (at 41 for four). The team needed me to get runs, so I would rank this as my best knock… The best I’ve played so far…” he added.

The left-hander was hit on the head by a short-pitched delivery from Abhimanyu Mithun a short while after lunch. It did look to have taken him by surprise, but the shots started flowing from Sudip’s bat soon after that incident. 

“Both Wriddhi and I were concentrating on playing positive cricket. We focused on treating the ball as per its merit.

VVS Laxman, during the practice sessions, had advised on making some subtle adjustments to Sudip’s footwork.

Considering how he went about his innings on Thursday, the 23-year-old seems to have grasped well whatever advice Laxman had for him.