February 9, 2018 by admin

Punjab taste first win, J&K stun starry Saurashtra

Alur (Karnataka), Feb 9

Punjab registered their first win in the Vijay Hazare tournament when they beat Odisha by 86 runs here today. Punjab had lost their opening match to Haryana on Wednesday. In other matches of the day, Haryana lost to Baroda by 51 runs, while J&K stunned Saurashtra by six wickets.
Batting first, Punjab managed to put just 225 runs on the board. However, their bowlers came out firing on all cylinders and shot out Odisha for just 139 to give their side a comfortable win. Left-arm pacer Barinder Sran and Manpreet Grewal spearheaded the charge as they picked seven wickets between them.
Earlier, Gurkeerat Mann struck a fine century to help Punjab go past the 200-run mark. He struck eight fours and three sixes in his 123-ball 106. The other Punjab batsmen seemed all at sea, so much so that the second highest contribution to the total was Abhishek Sharma’s 23.
The total looked inadequate but Sran and Grewal ran through Odisha to hand Punjab a crucial win.
In the J&K-Saurashtra match, Parvez Rasool (67*) and Shubham Pundir (55*) steered their side to a stunning six-wicket win over the star-studded Saurashtra. Chasing 268, opener Ahmed Bandy gave J&K a fine start with a 66-ball 65 before Rasool and Pundir joined hands for a match-winning 98-run fourth-wicket stand.
Brief scores: Punjab: 225 (Gurkeerat Mann 106; Deepak Behra 3/19); Odisha 139 all out (Shesdeep Patra 26; Barinder Sran 4/22, Manpreet Grewal 3/25)
Baroda: 250 (Vishnu Solanki 67, Deepak Hooda 46; Amit Mishra 3/57); Haryana 199 all out (Shubham Rohilla 61, Jayant Yadav 55; Swapnil Singh 3/42).
Saurashtra 267/6 (Arpit Vasavada 85*; Waseem Raza 2/45); J&K 269/4 (Parvez Rasool 67*, Ahmed Bandy 65, Shubham Pundir 55*)