Karnataka played like a champion and bagged the first title of the season. After posting this season’s competition-high score of 359, R. Vinay Kumar’s team outplayed Punjab by 156 runs in the final of the Vijay Hazare Trophy at Motera here on Tuesday.
Once Yuvraj Singh’s front-foot pull proved fatal in the 22nd over — he offered a straight forward catch to Mayank Agarwal — the writing on the wall was clear. Even though the second-wicket stand between Amitoze Singh and Mandeep Singh kept Punjab in the contest, the pressure to sustain the run rate of over six was quite daunting.
Amitoze became the first run out victim. Taruwar Kohli followed suit and Karnataka had virtually won the match before the rival captain took guard.
The bat won the contest with the ball in the first session as Karnataka — invited to bat by the Punjab captain Harbhajan Singh — did not look a gift horse in the mouth.
The return of seamer Sandeep Sharma to make the pace attack more incisive, or the possibility of dew in the later stage of the match, may have influenced the Punjab skipper’s decision.
Robin Uthappa and Agarwal collared Punjab’s bowling that with debutant Jagadeesha Suchith bashing seamer Sandeep Sharma over cover off the last ball for the 39th boundary shot of the innings.
Uthappa and Agarwal scattered the ball all over the park for 66 runs in the opening 10 mandatory Powerplay overs and then pushed the scoring beyond seven-runs-an-over by the 15th. The duo added 162 runs before Uthappa top-edged one.
Uthappa now holds three unique Karnataka batting partnership records — 206 for the first wicket with K.L. Rahul, 214 for the second with Ganesh Satish and 209 for the fifth wicket with Karun Nair.
Agarwal meanwhile raced to his third one-day century for Karnataka off 100 balls. Karun Nair — promoted ahead of Ravikumar Samarth — pounded the bowling and Manish Pandey helped him add 87 for the third wicket.
All the Karnataka batsmen, except for Abhimanyu Mithun, touched the hundred or plus scoring rate average.
Throwing the bat at everything, Karnataka lost its last five batsmen for 25 runs. Sandeep Sharma was in line for a hat-trick after dismissing Shishir Bhavane and Mithun but Suchith denied him.
Karnataka scored 35 off 30 balls in the second Powerplay taken from the 35th over and only a 20-minute power failure before dusk stalled action in the middle.
