Impressive bowling by seamers Debasis Mohanty and Basant Mohanty helped Orissa restrict Railways to 176 for four on the opening day of their four-day Ranji Trophy Super League (Group-A) match at the East Coast Railway ground in Bhubaneswar today. Test discard Debasis and promising Basant virtually tied down the Railway batsmen with economy rate of 1.00 and 1.66 respectively. The figures of Debasis read 20-10-20-1, while that of Basant 21-8-34-1. Watching the first day’s proceedings proved to a boring experience as the railway side batted at a snail’s pace. The ultra defensive approach of the railway batsmen is best exemplified from the fact that their top scorer V Cheluvaraj made an unbeaten 74 despite occupying the crease through out the day. He faced 248 balls and hit seven boundaries. Put into bat, Railways made a modest start with F Fazal (32) and Cheluvaraj compiling 53 runs for the opening wicket. But the run out of Fazal and the cheap dismissal of batting mainstay Sanjay Bangar prompted the side put the shutters down. Orissa’s third medium pacer Alok Sahoo also bowled well in his debut match. He caused another setback for the opposition by taking the wicket of Yere Goud for 23. Bad light dampened the match further as play was stopped six short of the scheduled 90 overs. SCOREBOARD: RAILWAYS (1st innings): F Fazal (run out) 32, V Cheluvaraj (batting) 72, S Bangar c H Das b D Mohanty 10, TP Singh b B Mohanty 11, Y Goud c H Das b A Sahoo 23, S Sanyal (batting) 20: Extras (b-3, lb-3, nb-1, w-1) 8. Total (4 wkts, 84 overs) 176 Fall of wickets: 1-53, 2-79, 3-107, 4-142. Bowling: Debasis Mohanty 20-10-20-1, Basant Mohanty 21-8-34-1, Alok Sahoo 19-3-48-1, Dhiraj Singh 20-3-65-0, Niranjan Behera 4-1-3-0.