Syed Ali Mushtaq Trophy 2018: Rishabh Pant blasts rapid 64; Suresh Raina flops again; Bengal remain unbeaten
Opener Rishabh Pant fired Delhi to their fourth win of the tournament and helped them to top the table with a blazing knock of 64 against Services. Pant starred in a flying opening stand of 90 in eight overs with his partner Sarthak Ranjan.
All it took Pant was 32 balls – a strike rate of exactly 200 – to lay the foundation for a massive total of Delhi. He bashed 11 fours and a six, but after he fell, his side got into trouble briefly as 90/0 became 98/3. Ranjan got 25 before the middle-order joined him to score plenty of the twenties themselves. Only Nitish Rana got an attacking 30 – with two fours and three sixes – as all of Dhruv Shorey, Lalit Yadav and captain Pradeep Sangwan fell for useful scores. Sangwan, at number seven, contributed finely with an entertaining 29 off merely 9 balls as Delhi finished on 225.
Services seemed determined to hunt down the huge target, testified by a 70-run second wicket stand in less than six overs between Ravi Chauhan and Anshul Gupta. The former smacked 53 from 23 deliveries to keep Services in the hunt for the next round but there was little help from the middle-order before Nakul Sharma gave it his all in a quickfire 53 from 36 balls with three fours and sixes each. But despite the fight, Services folded up for 203 in a competitive run chase to eventually bow out of the tournament.
In other matches, India discard Suresh Raina's torrid run continued after yet another low score of 13 – he has only 55 runs in five innings after a below-par Ranji season – despite Uttar Pradesh beating Chattisgarh comfortably to qualify for the next stage. Meanwhile, Bengal's captain Manoj Tiwary's all-around show – 63* with the bat and 4/23 with the ball – kept his team undefeated to sail into the quarter-finals with four wins.
Central Zone:
Railways 151/6 in 19.3 overs (Saini 41, Rawat 37; Choudhary 2/31) beat Rajasthan 150/6 in 20 overs (Tajinder 43, S Khan 40; Mishra 2/34) by 4 wickets
Uttar Pradesh 114/4 in 11.2 overs (Nath 43*, RK Singh 33; Ahmed 2/29) beat Chattisgarh 113/8 in 20 overs (Khare 33; S Kumar 2/16, A Mishra 2/19) by 6 wickets
East Zone:
Bengal 147/4 in 17.1 overs (Tiwary 63*, Majumdar 34; Purkayastha 2/24) beat Assam 143/9 in 20 overs (RK Das 53; Tiwary 4/23, S Gupta 1/9) by 6 wickets
Jharkhand 129/2 in 16.4 overs (Kishan 51, Jaggi 40; Pradhan 1/15) beat Odisha 123 in 19.4 overs (Poddar 64; M Kumar 4/14, Surwar 2/27) by 8 wickets
North Zone:
Delhi 225/8 in 20 overs (Pant 64, N Rana 30; N Yadav 3/53) beat Services 203 in 19.1 overs (Chauhan 53, Nakul 53; Khejroliya 3/38) by 22 runs