: R. Vinay Kumar, the South Zone captain, is a specialist bowler who is no muck with the bat. His East Zone counterpart, Manoj Tiwary, is a batsman who occasionally rolls his arm over. While both the captains excelled in their respective department, it was the belligerence of East’s Ishank Jaggi (90, 51b, 11x4, 2x6) that turned out to be the decisive factor in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy Twenty20 inter-zonal championship game between the two sides.
Riding on Jaggi’s swashbuckling innings and useful contributions from opener Shreevats Goswami and Saurabh Tiwary, East Zone had little trouble in overhauling South Zone’s 178 for six at the Wankhede Stadium. The four-wicket win propelled East to the top of the points tally and put a stop to South’s ambition of winning the trophy.
Ever since he took guard after Ishan Kishan’s dismissal in the second over, Jaggi looked on song. Being excluded from the IPL Auction list, he made a statement of intent with a breezy knock displaying his wide array of strokes. That he made a meat of T20 specialist S. Arvind – scoring 30 runs off the 11 balls he faced from the left-arm pacer – speaks about the form he was in.
Jaggi’s knock overshadowed the exploits of Mayank Agarwal and Vinay at the top for South. Agarwal in full flow is a treat to watch in white-ball cricket. And the Karnataka opener displayed his wide array of strokes, the lofted square drive over point fence off Ashoke Dinda in the opening over being the highlight of his 36-ball 72. Vinay promoted himself to No. 3 and smashed the East bowlers out of the park. He was, however, involved in Dinesh Karthik’s run-out, which was effected on either sides of Tiwary getting both the set batsmen to hole out at long-off.
The dismissals then put a check on South’s scoring. With Dinda conceding just eight runs off his last two overs, South could add only 39 runs off the last five overs after being set for a gargantuan total at 139 for three off 15 overs.
The scores :
South Zone : Tanmay Agarwal b Das 2, Mayank Agarwal c S. Tiwary b M. Tiwary 72, R. Vinay Kumar c S. Tiwary b M. Tiwary 68, Dinesh Karthik run out 1, Ricky Bhui c Chatterjee b M. Tiwary 3, Pavan Deshpande (not out) 21, G. Hanuma Vihari c S. Tiwary b Ghosh 5, Vijay Shankar (not out) 2; Extras (lb-3, nb-1) 4; Total (for six wkts. in 20 overs): 178.
Fall of wickets : 1-11, 2-123, 3-129, 4-139, 5-162, 6-174.
East Zone bowling : Ashoke Dinda 4-0-24-0, Pritam Das 4-0-35-1, Shahbaz Nadeem 3-0-23-0, Sayan Ghosh 3-0-29-1, Biplab Samantray 1-0-15-0, Manoj Tiwary 4-0-31-3, Writtick Chatterjee 1-0-18-0.
North Zone : Shreevats Goswami c Karthik b Shankar 25, Ishan Kishan c Vihari b Arvind 7, Ishank Jaggi c T. Agarwal b Thampi 90, Saurabh Tiwary c Shankar b Vinay 33, Manoj Tiwary (not out) 14, Biplab Samantray (not out) 7; Extras (nb-2, w-3) 5; Total (for four wkts. in 19.4 overs): 181.
Fall of wickets : 1-13, 2-77, 3-158, 4-159.
South Zone bowling : R. Vinay Kumar 4-0-39-1, S. Arvind 3.4-0-47-1, Basil Thampi 4-0-28-1, M. Ashwin 4-0-36-0, Vijay Shankar 3-0-18-1, Pavan Deshpande 1-0-13-0.
