After completing the demolition act, Gujarat finished the day on a safe note, making five for no loss in two overs. Winning the toss on a track known to favour the seamers, stand-in Orissa captain P Jayachandra baffled many by opting to bat first. It did not matter to him that riding on the fine performance of speedster Basant Mohanty, Orissa had registered their only win in six matches, trouncing Punjab by nine wickets on this track, earlier last month. The home team also did not pay importance to the fact that in the absence of injured Shiv Sundar Das and Bikash Pati, they were trying a new pair of opening batsmen in Paresh Patel and debutant Natraj Behera. Making matters worse, Orissa scored at a snail`s pace (1.88 runs per over) and turned the day`s proceedings into a boring affair for the home crowd. The approach of the batsmen gave the impression that perhaps the hosts were interested to bat only once and achieve an inning victory by bowling out the opposition twice. But their intention belied their action. The lack-lustre batting also made the modest opposition bowling look like a deadly attack. Among the home batsmen, Niranjan Behera top-scored with 49, which came off 187 balls and included four boundaries. No partnership could produce a half-century, while seven batsmen failed to reach double figures. After retaining their place in the Elite Division, Orissa were expected to show some entertaining performance in batting and make amend of their past failures. But yet another failure only confirmed the growing impression that Orissa batsmen are not good enough to play first class cricket, let alone Test or ODI. Brief scores: Orissa 162 all out in 86 overs (Niranjan Behera 49, Paresh Patel 31: Mohnish Patel 6/53, Sidharth Trivedi 2/31) vs Gujarat 5 for no loss in 2 overs.