So it wasn’t that easy to get those runs. But it was important that at least one of us tried to stay there and play along so that the rest of us could bat around us there,” Padikkal said after the day’s play. The 23-year-old earned the praise of J Abhiram, chairman of the Karnataka State Senior selection committee, who watched the day’s proceedings.

“It was a brilliant innings by Padikkal. After the bodily blows he recouped quickly and played a responsible innings to remain unbeaten. His partnership to (century stand) with Samarth too was vital. Wish he continues in the same vein on Saturday,” complimented Abhiram, former Karnataka all-rounder.

Tamil Nadu would have been happier had they restricted Karnataka to around 240 or 250. “No it’s ok (288 runs). I mean playing in Chepauk, it’s always tough for a fast bowler or for any team bowling first will always be challenging. But we came back. We have come back really well into the game, especially in the last session we bowled pretty well and we bowled tight as well. We picked a couple of wickets,” pointed out L Balaji, TN bowling coach. “Definitely, the way they batted, it was fantastic and we also let go with a couple of chances. But we will have to come again and show up with a good attitude on Saturday,” added the former TN captain.

With the surface aiding the spinners towards the end, it looks like it will deteriorate further. “There will be some assistance since we have witnessed it today and definitely there is some assistance the way R Ajith Ram bowled. He is our go to bowler when it comes to containing the runs and he has shown up again and he was a little bit unlucky today,” said Balaji.

Select scores: Karnataka 288/5 (Devdutt Padikkal 151 batting; Sai Kishore 3/94) vs Tamil Nadu; Kerala 265/4 in 90 ovs (Sachin Baby 110 n.o, Akshay Chandran 76 n.o; Suraj Sindhu Jaiswal 1/40, Akash Deep 1/55) vs Bengal; Assam 235/5 in 86 ovs (Parvej Musaraf 89, Abhishek Thakuri 77 n.o; Amod Yadav 2/48, Sakibul Gani 2/44) vs Bihar; Andhra 236/4 in 80 ovs (Ricky Bhui 90 n.o, KV Sasikanth 72, Karan Shinde 45 n.o; Yash Dayal 1/48, Saurabh Kumar 1/65) vs Uttar Pradesh; Delhi 264 all out in 71 ovs (Himmat Singh 60; Ayush Badoni 51; Vinay Galetiya 5/66) vs Himachal Pradesh; Uttarakhand 232/3 in 90 ovs (Vaibhav Bhatt 101 batting, Jiwanjot Singh 90) vs Odisha.