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A Cover Drive batsman guides the ball past the keeper during their match against Maharashtra Shers on Friday. (Bhola Prasad)
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Four city-based outfits made their way to the knockout stages of the all India invitational under-19 cricket tournament for Pankaj Memorial Trophy on Friday, thereby completing the quarter final set up of the competition.
The four teams — Tata Tigers, Tata Victoria, Agrico Civic Cricket Academy and Cover Drive — will join Kolkata Ryders, Anup Das XI, Assam Racers and Chennai Kolts for the business end of the tournament, that is being played out at the Keenan Stadium and Bistupur’s Armoury Ground. The quarter-final matches kick off from Saturday.
While Tata Victoria defeated Vidarbha Royals by 8 wickets in their last league match at Keenan Stadium, Cover Drive had it easy against Maharashtra Shers at the same venue later on drubbing their opponents by 71 runs.
The other matches of the day, however, were not one-sided, with Anup Das XI sweating it out against Jamshedpur’s Heena Allied at Armoury Ground to earn a 26 run win. Later on, UP’s Taj XI stitched a two-wicket inconsequential win over Kings XI Punjab, with both teams out of quarter-final contention.
Earlier during the day a fine all round performance by Abhishek Sharma saw the Tata Victoria team drub their Vidarbha counterparts.
The youngster first shone with the cherry picking up two important wickets to break Vidarbha’s batting backbone and later came back to haunt his opponents with the willow as well, scoring a quickfire 15 runs to help his team cross the target.
Aditya Raj, Luv Sahu and Satish Kumar supported Sharma well with the ball, scalping two wickets each, to help shoot out Vidarbha for a meagre 32 runs in a little less than 13 overs.
Cover Drive also had a comfortable outing versus Maharashtra Shers, putting up a competitive total of 142 runs for 6 in their allotted quota of 20 overs. Nitesh Kumar top scored with 25 while Ayush Kumar made 23. Biswadeep and Ankur too chipped in the batting effort with 18 and 13 runs, respectively.
In reply, the Maharashtra side was shot out for 71 runs in 15.4 overs with Yohan Gavit’s 19 runs standing out as the top score.
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