Vijay Hazare Trophy | Plate Group: Puducherry thrash Sikkim while Uttarakhand outplay Mizoram

In a completely one-sided contest, Sikkim won the toss and chose to bat. The opening stand lasted for only 26 runs and from then they kept on losing wickets at regular intervals. The Puducherry bowlers, particularly Fabid Ahmed and Narayanan had a feast as the Sikkim innings fell flat at 89. On the other hand, the chase by Puducherry batsmen was in total contrast to what happened in the first innings. Puducherry was on the verge of winning by 10 wickets when they lost their opener Rohit D. 

Team Mizoram was no match for Team Uttarakhand in another lopsided contest, where only one side looked like winning the match.  Mizoram won the toss and chose to field which proved to be a costly decision as Uttarakhand batsmen put up a big score of 321. For Uttarakhand, apart from the Karamveer Kaushal’s 118, Saurav Rawat and Mayank Mishra also came good with the bat scoring 61 and 41* respectively. Taruwar Kohli was the pick of the bowlers as he claimed six wickets for 65 runs. In the second innings, Mizoram got a poor start losing two wickets for 13 runs. After a small partnership of 31 runs, they kept losing wickets at regular intervals and were bundled out for 169 in 48.4 overs. Only Sinan (73*) did well with the bat and apart from him no other batsmen even touched a score of 30 let alone scoring a half-century.

In another game of the plate group, Arunachal Pradesh lost both its openers quickly for 16 runs while batting first. Then there was a 70-run partnership between Samarth Sen and Kshtiz Sharma before Samarth got out for 32 runs. Then there was a huge partnership of 158 runs between the two centurions who took the total to a respectable 244 before Pawan got out for a well made 112 runs. Akhilesh remained not out for 102 runs. For the Nagaland bowlers, it was not a productive day as they were able to pick only four wickets. In reply, the Nagaland batsmen came strong and won the match with six overs remaining. The Nagaland team did not bank on a single partnership rather they had many small partnerships for almost every wicket that fell and that way they reached the target of 272 with pretty ease. S Thakur was the pick of the bowlers for Arunachal Pradesh taking three wickets for 52 runs.