Vijay Hazare Trophy: Abhimanyu Mithun stars as Karnataka seal dramatic victory over Bengal to qualify for final
Karnataka won a nail-biting match against Bengal to qualify for the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy for the second consecutive season. The defending champions won the match by six runs after some excellent death-over bowling from Abhimanyu Mithun and Vinay Kumar.
Karnataka begin poorly
Put into bat at Ahmedabad, Karnataka got off to a shaky start, losing their first wicket in just the second over when Veer Pratap Singh shattered Mayank Agarwal’s stumps. The Vinay Kumar-led team were never in command and kept losing wickets at regular intervals, with stars like Robin Uthappa, Manish Pandey, Stuart Binny and Karun Nair throwing their wickets away after all getting decent stars.
Struggling at 222/9 in the 44th over, Vinay and Mithun came together to propel Karnataka’s score to 268/9 in 50 overs, with the Karnataka skipper striking six boundaries.
Former India U19 wicket-keeper Shreevats Goswami and Arindam Das got Bengal off to a good start, putting on a 50-run opening partnership within the first 10 overs. Manoj Tiwary and Sudip Chatterjee hit half-centuries and with Subhajit Banerjee and Saurasish Lahiri hitting some lusty blows, it looked like Bengal were all set to reach the final.
Mithun and Vinay seal victory
Needing just 14 runs to win from 13 balls with 5 wickets in hand, Mithun dismissed Banerjee with a brilliant yorker. Vinay followed it up, bowling a very tidy over, giving away just 4 runs and picking up two crucial wickets in the penultimate over of the match.
With Lahiri taking a single and exposing tail-ender Ashok Dinda, Mithun sensed an opportunity and made full use of it by dismissing the Bengal fast bowler for a golden duck. Number 11 Iresh Saxena did well to shift the strike to well-set Lahiri, but pressure got the better of the Bengal all-rounder as Mithun clean bowled him to complete a memorable victory for Karnataka.
Karnataka will now face Punjab in the final of the tournament.
Brief Scores
Karnataka 268/9 (Stuart Binny 50, Veer Pratap Singh 3/76)
Bengal 262 all out (Sudip Chatterjee 67, Abhimanyu Mithun 3/40)