Baroda's Jacob Martin became the sixth batsman in Ranji trophy history to reach 1000 runs in a season during his second innings score of 19 against Punjab (Ranji Trophy Super League, 1998-99) at Baroda on Saturday (06-03-99). He has now scored 1018 runs and now needs just 17 runs to surpass the record of late Raman Lamba of 1034 runs in 1996-97 season. Baroda has still one more match to play against Hyderabad (from 13th March). However, Karnataka's R Vijay Bhardwaj who crossed the mark a day earlier now has 1022 runs to his credit during this season. Since Karnataka has reached the knock-out round, Bhardwaj too has an excellent opportunity to surpass Lamba. So its a race between Martin and Bhardwaj.

Vijay Bhardwaj's scores during this Ranji Trophy season (1998-99) for Karnataka

                   v   Andhra           53  &  75
                   v   Tamil Nadu      171
                   v   Goa              31
                   v   Kerala          200*
                   v   Madhya Pradesh   45  &  10
                   v   Haryana         175
                   v   Saurashtra       87* &  51
                   v   Bihar           124

                   v   Saurashtra     108
                   v   Maharashtra    103*
                   v   Mumbai          43   &  82
                   v   Gujarat         27   & 177*
                   v   Bengal         242
                   v   Rajasthan       29   & 100*
                   v   Punjab          88   &  19

     
            Season   Teams       M  Ins  No  Runs  HS     Avg  100 50

Raman Lamba 1996-97  Delhi      10  14   -   1034  250   73.86  3   4
AK Sharma   1996-97  Delhi       8  10   1   1033  220* 114.78  5   3
RV Bhardwaj 1998-99  Karnataka   8  11   9   1022  200* 113.55  4   4
WV Raman    1988-89  Tamil Nadu  7   9   2   1018  313  145.42  3   1
JJ Martin   1998-99  Baroda      7  11   3   1018  242  127.25  5   2
RS Modi     1944-45  Bombay      5   7   1   1008  245* 168.00  5   1