Former India captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni approached Eden Gardens curator Sujan Mukherjee to discuss the excessive seam movement during Jharkhand’s 42-run win over Saurashtra in a low-scoring Group D encounter on Wednesday, PTI reported.

As many as 20 wickets fell in 50.4 overs in the game that saw Jharkhand getting bowled out for 125, and still emerging victors after dismissing Saurashtra for a paltry 83.

Soon after the match ended, Dhoni headed straight to Mukherjee’s dugout and engaged in an animated discussion that lasted about five minutes, the report stated.

A former CAB joint-secretary, Mukherjee, who is now the curator at the famous venue, said Dhoni observed that the track seemed a lot.

Mukherjee though played down the matter. “Yes he said the wicket seamed a lot but he never came to complain,” Mukherjee was quoted as saying. “Even I’m not happy with the wicket. I also felt the ball moved and swung a bit more.”

“He came to meet me as I was his East Zone coach during his U-19 days. During his previous match I was not here so he came to meet me,” Mukherjee added.

“It seemed as there was some moisture retention that led to ball swinging. It was one of those days. It will be fine by the next match.”

Batting first, Jharkhand were bowled out for 125 as Saurashtra pacers Shaurya Sanandia and Kushang Patel ran through their batting order. Ishan Kishan’s 53 helped them reach a competitive total. Dhoni (23) and Ishank Jaggi were the only other batsmen to score in double digits.

Sanandia finished with figures of 5/47, while Patel took four wicket for 39 runs.

Despite the paltry total, Saurashtra struggled in the chase. They were skittled out for 83 in 25.1 overs with Varun Aaron and Raju Shukla bagging four wickets apiece. This was Jharkhand’s third successive victory.

This is not the first time that Dhoni has been peeved by the wicket at the Eden Gardens. In 2011, Dhoni had termed the Eden Garden’s wicket for the fifth cricket ODI against England “ugly looking”.

Brief scores

Group A

  • Odisha 281/7 in 50 overs (Govinda Poddar 77, Abhishek Yadav 40; Swapnil Singh 3/58) lost to Baroda 284/5 in 46.2 overs (Aditya Waghmode 92, Deepak Hooda 78) by five wickets.  
  • Railways 246/9 in 50 overs (Arindam Ghosh 83, Pratham Singh 41; Yuvraj Singh 2/35) lost to Punjab 247/7 in 49.1 overs (Gurkeerat Singh Mann 69*, Yuvraj Singh 66, Manpreet Gony 46*; Ashish Yadav 3/41) by three wickets.  
  • Haryana 306/6 in 49 overs (Shubham Rohilla 118, Nitin Saini 54; Amit Verma 3/47) beat Assam 253/9 in 49 overs (Arup Das 65*, Arun Karthik 60; Chaitanya Bishnoi 2/15) by 53 runs.  

Group B

  • Uttar Pradesh 387/5 in 50 overs (Akshdeep Nath 143, Eklavya Dwivedi 75, Shivan Chaudhary 63) beat Kerala 142 in 32 overs (Vishnu Vinod 32; Piyush Chawla 3/19) by 245 runs.
  • Tripura 206 in 49.5 overs (Nirupam Sen Chowdhary 51, Yashpal Singh 47; Pankaj Jaiswal 4/32, Akshay Chauhan 3/41) beat Himachal Pradesh 68 in 15 overs (Sumeet Verma 31; Abhijit Sarkar 6/31, Ajoy Sarkar 4/37) by 138 runs.
  • Maharashtra 270 in 48.5 overs (Ruturaj Gaikwad 82, Naushad Shaikh 68; M Mohammed 2/36) beat Tamil Nadu 248 in 49.1 overs (Baba indrajith 49, Kaushik Gandhi 38; Shrikant Mundhe 4/43, Nikit Dhumal 2/38) by 22 runs.  

Group C

  • Madhya Pradesh 213/9 in 50 overs (Shubham Sharma 40) lost to Gujarat 214/6 in 43.1 overs (Priyank Panchal 53) by 4 wickets.
  • Andhra 228/9 in 50 overs (AG Pradeep 115; Felix Alemao 3/42) beat Goa 225 in 50 overs (Snehal Suhas Kauthankar 83; Bhargav Bhatt 3/36) by 3 runs.
  • Rajasthan 274/9 in 50 overs (Dishant Yagnik 100; Kanishk Seth 4/59) lost to Bengal 275/8 in 49 overs (Sudip Chatterjee 85*, Abhimanyu Easwaran 79; Rahul Chahar 3/33) by 2 wickets.

Group D

  • Jharkhand 125 in 27.3 overs (Ishan Kishan 53; Shaurya Sanandia 5/47, Kushang Patel 4/39) beat Saurashtra 83 allout in 25.1 overs (Varun Aaron 4/20, Rahul Shukla 4/32, Jaskaran Singh 2/29) by 42 runs.
  • Services 214 in 48.4 overs (Nakul Verma 68, Shamsher Yadav 52; Parvez Rasool 3/36) beat Jammu and Kashmir 190 in 45.1 overs (Ahmad Omar Banday 59, Punit Bisht 45; Vipin Singh 3/41) by 24 runs.
  • Hyderabad 197 in 47 overs (Bavanaka Sandeep 70*; Shubham Thakur 4/44, Ashutosh Singh 2/44) beat Chhattisgarh 193/9 in 50 overs (Ashutosh Singh 64; Mehdi Hasan 2/30, Ravi Kiran 2/33, Chama Milind 2/40, Mohammad Siraj 2/40) by four runs.