NAGPUR: When Jitesh Sharma and Shubham Dubey joined hands, Vidarbha — 86 runs away from the target, with only 42 balls left — looked down and out against Uttarakhand. The two, though, tweaked the script of the match with their explosive batting to guide Vidarbha to victory, with 10 balls to spare, in their Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy (SMAT) opener on Monday.
Sharma scored the fastest fifty in SMAT by a Vidarbha batter as the team scored 145 in just 68 balls. Vidarbha scored at a run-rate of 12.79 in the rain-truncated T20 match at Punjab Cricket Stadium Stadium, Mullanpur.
Wicketkeeper-batter Sharma hit three fours and five sixes in his 18-ball blitzkrieg which yielded 51 runs at a strike rate of 283.33. It was the joint third fastest fifty of SMAT. Dubey too was at his attacking best as he blasted 47 (2x4;4x6) in just 24 balls.
The pitch had become challenging during the chase with odd balls keeping low. Chasing 142, Vidarbha needed to score close to 11 runs per over and opener Atharva Taide (15;9b;2x4;1x6) to get the innings off to a flying start.
Though Vidarbha scored at close to 10 runs per over, they were in a spot of bother having lost three top-order batters — Taide, Dhruv Shorey (9 off 5 balls) and Karun Nair (16 off 13 balls) — by the sixth over.
The arrival of Sharma and Dubey, though, changed the game completely. Hardly taking any time to settle down, the duo disturbed the lines and lengths of Uttarakhand bowlers with audacious strokeplay.
Earlier, the rain delay, which ate away more than 30 minutes of the match time, resulted in it being reduced to a 13-over-a-side affair.
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Taide, captaining a senior Vidarbha team for the first time, called the coin correctly. Avneesh Sudha scored 33-ball 50 while Swapnil Singh carted off 26 off just nine balls as Uttarakhand posted 141 for 3 in 13 overs.
With the win Vidarbha moved atop the Group D with 4 points and a net run rate (NRR) of 1.948. Next up, they face Rajasthan on Thursday.
BRIEF SCORES: Uttarakhand: 141 for 3 in 13 overs (Avneesh Sudha 50, Yuvraj Choudhary 27, Swapnil Singh 26; Darshan Nalkande 2-33, Akshay Karnewar 1-32) lost to Vidarbha 145 for 3 in 11.2 overs (Jitesh Sharma 51*, Shubham Dubey 47*; Agrim Tiwari 1-22) by seven wickets.
