A superb spell of seam bowling by Rajneesh Gurbani demolished Delhi's lower order and bundled them out for 295. In a space of seven balls, the 24-year old pacer bagged the last four wickets of the Delhi innings, including a hat-trick, to finish with 6 for 59 - his fifth fifer in 10 first-class games.
Resuming the day on 271 for 6, Delhi began solidly. Even as runs weren't flowing, overnight batsmen Dhruv Shorey and Vikas Mishra saw through the first hour of the morning without any damage. Gurbani and Aditya Thakare bowled in good channels but there was little to trouble the batsmen.
It was in the 99th over when Gurbani got into his groove and started troubling the batsmen with deliveries that were jagging back in after pitching. Shorey, who was looking solid till then, was struck on his box in the third ball. Even as he continued the innings, he looked in considerable pain.
But the demolition job began in the next over as Gurbani uprooted Mishra's offstump with an incoming delivery, ending his 82-ball vigil at the crease. He scored only seven runs but helped Delhi oversee difficult phases - last evening and on Saturday morning. Nonetheless, that was only the start of a collapse.
Navdeep Saini's stay at the crease lasted only a solitary ball as he too had his stumps uprooted by a similar delivery - last of the over - to put Gurbani on a hat-trick. Even as the pacer was in pain with his hamstring, which was troubling him on the opening day as well, he came on to bowl the next over as well.
In the meanwhile, Shorey decided to go after Aditya Thakare and nearly lost his wicket in the process. Playing an uppercut to third man, Apoorva Wankhade, stationed there, lost his footing and dropped an easy chance. The dropped catch wasn't to prove too costly as Gurbani came back to shatter his stumps off the first ball of his over and become only the second bowler in a Ranji final to bag a hat-trick and end a fine innings by Shorey on 145. Three good deliveries later, he even had last man Kulwant Khejroliya dismissed and ended Delhi's innings.
In reply, a half-inspired outfit came out to give Vidarbha openers an easy passage to Lunch. Even as the in-form openers Sanjay Ramaswamy and Faiz Fazal weren't middling the ball as well, they weren't troubled much by the Delhi bowlers. Delhi also failed to pick up that all of their 10 wickets fell from the media box end and didn't use their prime pacers from that end.
Towards the end of the session, both the batsmen got easy singles and cruised to 45 for no loss before the first break of the day.
Brief Scores: Delhi 295 (Dhruv Shorey 145, Himmat Singh 66; Rajneesh Gurbani 6-59, Aditya Thakare 2-74) lead Vidarbha 45/0 (Faiz Fazal 24*, Sanjay Ramaswamy 18*) by 250 runs
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