IN-FORM middle-order batsmen Jagjot Singh Sasan and Dharmendra Thakur propped up Vidarbha score against Karnataka in their Cooch Behar Trophy match at VCA’s Kalamna ground on Sunday.

Jagjot (94; 85b, 11x4, 4x6) and Thakur (48; 85b, 7x4) recorded the best partnership of the innings putting on 129 in good time (154 balls) after the overnight batters Neel Athaley and Md Faiz could not add anything substantial to their overnight scores.

In reply to Vidarbha’s competitive score of 450, Karnataka were 107-2 in 47 overs. Opener Swaroop S Hipparagi (59*; 127b, 11x4) and Prakar Chaturvedi (17*; 49b, 3x) were the not out batsmen when stumps were drawn.

Vidarbha started the day at 294-3 and lost skipper Faiz for his overnight score of 20 without any addition to the team’s score. Twenty runs later, Athaley, who took his score from 156 to 162 was the next man out.

Jagjot and Thakur then took the centre stage. However, both were unlucky to have missed personal milestones. While Jagjot got out six short of what could have been a brilliant hundred, two more runs would have given Thakur yet another fifty in the tournament.

Jagjot showed no respect to Karnataka bowlers and toyed with them carting four sixes and hitting eleven boundaries. Thakur played an ideal ally. At 443-5, Vidarbha were looking good for a 500-plus score. But both the set batsmen, and Ashit Singh in between, fell at the same score in a space of six balls. For the visitors, Aaditya Nair (3-50), Hardik Raj (3-101), Yashovardhan Parantap (2-64) and Mohsin Khan (2-80) shared the wickets.

Karnataka were given a sound start with Vijayaraj (28) and Hipparagi taking the team to 70 before Gaurav Farde struck for the first time in the day cleaning up the former. In his next over, Farde had new man Dhruv Prabhakar (1) caught by Danish Malewar. Former champions Vidarbha, who still lead by 343 runs, must make sure they take good first innings lead, to have another go at the title.