On the third day today of the Ranji Trophy final being played in Chennai, Tamil Nadu were 66 for three wickets in their first innings in reply to Rajasthan's first innings score of 402.K. Vasudevadas at 25 and D Karthik at 47 were at the crease when the game ended for the day. The defending champions Rajasthan could pile up the huge score due to brilliant batting of the openers A Chopra 94 and V A Saxena 257. Saxena's 257 against Tamil Nadu is the third longest innings in terms of minutes by any batsman in the history of first-class game. Saxena batted for 907 minutes. He is only behind former Himachal Pradesh captain Rajeev Nayyar who batted for 1015 minutes for his 271 against Jammu & Kashmir in a Ranji Trophy match at Chamba back in 1999-00. Pakistan legend Hanif Mohammed is second in the list having batted 970 minutes scoring 337 against the West Indies at Bridgetown back in 1957-58.