LUCKNOW, Oct. 25 -- Former champions and hosts Uttar Pradesh will be on the hunt for their maiden win in the new domestic season, when they take on spirited Odisha in their second, four-day home match of the Elite Group A Ranji Trophy, beginning on Saturday, at the Green Park Stadium in Kanpur. They had failed to exploit the home advantage in the first match of the season last week. Uttar Pradesh, who could manage just three points against Andhra in their first match on the basis of the first innings lead, start favourites against the visitors, who lost to Baroda by seven wickets in their opening game and have no points in the table. The only worry for Uttar Pradesh is the absence of their star batter and Team India's T20 specialist Rinku Singh, who has left for Australia to play a five-match T20I series against hosts, starting on October 29. He will also miss the next two Ranji Trophy games in between as Team India will be playing their last T20 game on November 8. While chasing Andhra's first innings total of 470 in the first match, Uttar Pradesh were struggling at 226/6, and they looked almost certain to concede first innings lead, but Rinku along with all-rounder Vipraj Nigam (42, 119b, 3x4, 2x6), Shivam Sharma (38, 136b, 5x4) and Shivam Mavi (20*, 30b, 1x4, 1x6) added valuable runs for seventh and eight wickets and helped Uttar Pradesh take the first innings lead with two wickets in hand. In the process, Rinku smacked a record unbeaten 165 in 273 balls with the help of 13 boundaries and two sixes. UP's top order batters like Aryan Juyal (66), Madhav Kaushik (54) and to some extent Abhishek Goswami (24) played their parts nicely, but skipper and Delhi-man Karan Sharma (2), Priyam Garg (18) and Aaradhya Yadav (17) failed to justify their selections. Now, they need to pull up their socks and ensure their team's first win of the season. "We need to exploit the home conditions for victory as well as full points, but we failed to do so in the first game on the home turf," said a team official on condition of anonymity. "Now, we won't have the services of Rinku, who saved the first match for us, so this will be a pressure situation for the batters in the middle order," he added. In fact, Uttar Pradesh paid the price for not having an extra spinner like Zeeshan Ansari in the Playing XI as two Andhra batters scored centuries to post a challenging total for the hosts. Barring leg spinner Vipraj Nigam, who took four wickets, no other bowler could impress much. "I didn't understand about the selection of keeper-batter Aradhya Yadav even when we had regular keeper Madhav Kaushik in the side. We need to have an extra spinner in the side to make use of the slow and spinners friendly black soil surface of the Green Park," said the official. Undoubtedly, Odisha look inferior to Uttar Pradesh on paper, but they have some class batters in the form of skipper Subranshu Senapati - who scored half centuries in both innings against Baroda - and Rajesh Dhuper, who also hit a half century in the match. Besides, pacer Sumit Sharma, who had three wickets in the first match, will also be a player to watch....