Even in a rather eventful East Zone Ranji Trophy league programme, there is little doubt that the major highlight was Orissa's victory over Bengal. When an event occurs for the first time in 43 years, it is something very special. It was Orissa's maiden victory over opponents they have normally found difficult to get by. This was the highwater mark in a campaign that saw them win the championship comfortably with a tally of 29 points. Their superiority was quite overwhelming as they scored three outright victories and notched up first innings points in the remaining match. Bengal, oft crowned East Zone champions, in fact did not even take second place; that spot was taken by Assam who finished with 19 points. Bengal were third with 18 points but made it to the knockout stage. Bihar, for long the second best team in the zone, had a poor season aggregating only eleven points while no hopers Tripura, not unexpectedly, finished in the cellar position with just three points.

And yet, the season started predictably enough with Bengal trouncing Tripura by an innings and 134 runs. Orissa got first innings points against Bihar, who then got only five against the expected eight against Tripura. Another minor surprise followed when Bengal got only five points against Assam who then came into the reckoning by getting eight points against Tripura. And when Orissa defeated Tripura by an innings, all seemed set for a battle royal between Bengal and Orissa for top spot. In the meantime Assam made doubly sure of a place in the knock out stage by getting eight points against Bihar.

The eagerly anticipated clash between Orissa and Bengal took place at the Eden Gardens in the closing days of the old year. Orissa led off with 256 and then came the decisive moment when Debasish Mohanty, in an inspired spell, bowled out Bengal for 117 with a bag of six for 48. Orissa then consolidated and scored 249 in their second knock. This left Bengal with the daunting task of getting 389 runs for victory. Despite the presence of Indian captain Sourav Ganguly, playing his only game of the Ranji season, Bengal were all out for 259, leaving Orissa victors by a handsome margin. Mohanty this time took five for 45 for match figures of eleven for 93. His performance overshadowed the feat of the last two Orissa batsmen J Das and A Barick who added 110 runs for the last wicket in the second innings.

Despite this defeat, Bengal were not really in danger of losing out on a place in the knock out stage thanks to Bihar's poor run. And in their final match, Bengal went on a run spree on their way to gaining five points against Bihar to ensure themselves at least of third spot. Orissa however set the seal on their best season in many years by defeating Assam by nine wickets to take top spot by a wide margin.

Orissa were well served by both their batsmen and bowlers. SS Raul was the leading run getter in the zone with 413 runs at 82.60. He scored two hundreds. RR Parida (274) and Shiv Sundar Das (257) were the other leading run getters while P Jai Chandra proved to be a valuable utility man. Raul and Das added 233 runs for the third wicket against Tripura. Among the bowlers, Mohanty was easily the best bowler in the zone finishing with 25 wickets at 12 apiece.

Assam were the surprise packet. Their main strength was the bowling and left arm spinner Sukhbinder Singh was easily the star with 20 wickets at 11.45 apiece. Another left arm spinner, Sunil Subramaniam, an `import' from Tamil Nadu, took 12 wickets at 15 apiece in his limited opportunities while opening bowler GD Dutta came good with 13 wickets at an average of 15. Their leading batsmen were skipper Z Zuffri (258) and PK Das (257).

Bengal could have benefited if Ganguly had made more appearances. As it was, in the only game against Orissa he got nine wickets, including a career best haul of six for 46 in the first innings, besides doing reasonably well with the bat. Too much depended on experienced hands like Devang Gandhi, Rohan Gavaskar and Utpal Chatterjee. To their credit, they did well - except in the all important game against Orissa. Gandhi scored 331 runs at 82.75, while Gavaskar's tally was 272 at 68.25. Nikhil Haldipur, in the only match he played, scored 153. Similarly, A Lahiri also played one match and got 130. He and Haldipur put on 296 runs for the first wicket against Bihar. Utpal bagged his usual quota of wickets (19 at just over 20 apiece).

For Bihar, this was a season to forget despite some fine individual performances from opening batsman N Ranjan who scored 347 runs at 57.83 with two hundreds, MS Dhoni, Rajiv Kumar and Sunil Kumar. Tripura after all these years - they made their debut in 1985-86 - have hardly shown any improvement and this was reflected in their meagre points tally.

© CricInfo