Opener N Jagadeesan’s century and pacer Raghupati Silambarasan’s four-wicket haul helped Tamil Nadu thrash Karnataka by 151 runs to enter the semi-finals. Tamil Nadu dominated this match from start to finish.
Opener Prashant Chopra missed out on a century by one run but a second wicket partnership between him and Nikhil Gangta helped Himachal Pradesh enter the semi-finals of the Vijay Hazare Trophy after beating Uttar Pradesh by five wickets in the first quarter-final here on Tuesday. Did. Chasing Uttar Pradesh’s target of 208, Himachal scored 99 runs in 141 balls with 10 fours and two sixes, besides his 122 runs with Nikhil (58 runs, 59 balls, five fours, three sixes). Thanks to the partnership, 208 runs for five wickets with 27 balls to spare, registered the victory.
Uttar Pradesh’s team could only manage 207 for nine despite a half-century from Rinku Singh (76 runs in 102 balls, six fours). Bhuvneshwar Kumar (46) and Akshdeep Nath (32) also played useful innings. For Himachal, fast bowler Vinay Galetia took three for 19 while Siddharth Sharma took two wickets for 27 runs. Pankaj Jaiswal also took two wickets for 43 runs.
Himachal skipper Rishi Dhawan won the toss and decided to field first, which Vinay proved right in the 15th over to reduce Uttar Pradesh’s score to 39 for four. After Vinay bowled opener Aryan Juyal (09), skipper Karan Sharma (00) and Sameer Rizvi (05) were lbw while Siddharth lbw opener Abhishek Goswami (17).
Akshdeep and Rinku took the team’s score beyond 100 runs but Siddharth broke the partnership of 64 runs by getting Akshdeep caught by Pankaj Jaiswal. Rinku then shared a 75-run partnership with Bhuvneshwar for the sixth wicket. Rinku was caught by Jaswal at the hands of Akash Vashisht to end his innings. Bhuvneshwar, however, played some catchy shots before being bowled off the last ball of Dhawan’s innings to take the team’s score past 200. He faced 52 balls and hit three fours and a six.
Prashant and Shubham Arora (19) got off to a good start after adding 54 runs for the first wicket. Shivam Mavi (3/34) broke this partnership by getting Shubham caught by Bhuvneshwar in the 18th over. Prashant and Nikhil then made a century partnership to bring Himachal closer to the target. When Himachal needed 32 runs to win, Ankit Rajput (2 for 52 runs) broke this partnership by bowling Nikhil and then Dhawan (00) was also sent to the pavilion in the same over.
Mavi denied him a century by getting Prashant caught by Akshdeep and then showed Sumit Verma (03) the way to the pavilion. Himachal lost four wickets within 18 runs, taking their score from 176 for one to 194 for five. However, Amit Kumar (14 not out) and Vashishth (03 not out) took the team to the target.
Tamil Nadu also reached the semi-finals:
Opener N Jagadeesan’s century and pacer Raghupati Silambarasan’s four-wicket haul helped Tamil Nadu thrash Karnataka by 151 runs to enter the semi-finals. Tamil Nadu dominated this match from start to finish. He invited to bat first and made a mammoth total of 354 for eight and then bundled out Karnataka for 203 in 39 overs.
The highlight of Tamil Nadu’s innings was Jagadeesan’s 102 runs for which he played 101 balls and hit nine fours and a six. He put on a 147-run partnership for the second wicket with R Sai Kishore (61) after Baba Aparajith (13) was dismissed early.
In the final over, Shah Rukh Khan played an unbeaten 79 off 39 balls with the help of seven fours and six sixes. Apart from him, captain Dinesh Karthik contributed 44 and Baba Inderjit contributed 31 runs. For Karnataka, leg-spinner Praveen Dubey took three for 67, while pacer Pramukh Krishna took two for 57. The Karnataka team stumbled in front of the big target from the very beginning. Raghupati (4/36) and veteran all-rounder Washington Sundar (3/43) did not allow any Karnataka batsman to last. Sandeep Warrier, Sai Kishore and M Siddharth took a wicket each.
For Karnataka, Srinivas Sharath top-scored with 43 while Abhinav Manohar contributed 34 runs. Devdutt Padikkal failed in the second consecutive match and returned to the pavilion in the second over of the innings without opening an account. Even after this, Karnataka lost wickets at regular intervals. When captain Manish Pandey (09) was dismissed, the score was 74 runs for four wickets. His team could not recover from these initial setbacks till the end.