Dhoni’s effort goes in vain; Jharkhand knocked out of Hazare trophy

Brief Scores:

Delhi vs Jharkhand: Delhi 225 all out in 50 ov defeated Jharkhand 126 all out in 38 ov.

Having won the toss, Jharkhand captain Varun Aaron chose to field first at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. Rishabh Pant and Shikhar Dhawan gave Delhi a perfect start notching up a 50-run partnership for the opening wicket, but Ankit Dabas soon got the first wicket as he managed to get a nick off Pant’s bat in the sixth over to make it 53-1. The bowlers did a good job as they managed to pick up wickets at regular intervals, and soon Delhi was struggling at 100-5. Nitish Rana and Pawan Negi managed to take their side to a respectable total of 225 with scores of 44 and 38 respectively.

After a decent show with the ball, the Jharkhand side were the favourites to win the match, but a disastrous display with the bat let them down. Openers Ishank Jaggi, and Ishan Kishan were clean bowled by Navdeep Saini and Ishant Sharma in successive overs to reduce them to 2-2. The misery continued as Saurabh Tiwary was sent packing in the last ball of the fifth over, and Kumar Deobrat was out the very next ball to make it 9-4.

M S Dhoni and Kaushal Singh, finally tried to get Jharkhand out of the woods with a double-digit partnership, but Saini managed to crash through Kaushal’s guard and bowled him out for 11 off 29 balls. Dhoni tried to pull his side towards the target, but with lack of support from the other end there was no way he could have pull off the herculean effort. Suboth Bhati skittled out the tail-enders to end Jharkhand’s innings for 126 while Dhoni remained not out for 70.

Other Scores:

Himachal Pradesh vs Punjab: Punjab 263/8 in 50 ov lost to Himachal Pradesh 266/5 in 49.2 ov.