Leading from the front: Mayank Agarwal used his experience to put South on the victory path.
| Photo Credit: S.S. KUMAR
R. Sai Kishore’s three-wicket haul (three for 45) and skipper Mayank Agarwal’s 84 (88b, 6×4, 1×6) ensured South Zone continued its merry run in the Deodhar Trophy as it defeated East Zone by five wickets at the Cricket Association of Pondicherry ground here on Sunday.
With a fourth straight win, South also sealed its place in the final and is the only unbeaten side in the tournament.
Chasing a modest 230 for victory, Mayank and Rohan Kunnummal got the team off brisky before the former and B. Sai Sudharsan (53, 67b, 4×4, 1×6) were involved in a match-winning 118-run stand for the second wicket.
Butter fingers
East’s fielders made things difficult for themselves with poor catching, with Mayank and Sai Sudharsan getting a reprieve early in their innings.
Mayank was also lucky when he nicked one to the ’keeper off a no-ball from Mura Singh in the third over. He then hit the free-hit for six and scored a few more boundaries off the pacer as he sprinted away in the PowerPlay.
Once the field spread out, Mayank used his experience to accumulate runs by rotating the strike to reach his third half-century of the tournament and put his side on the victory path.
Earlier, East Zone’s innings saw wild momentum swings, but a costly middle-order collapse meant the team had an uphill battle to stay alive in the contest as it folded out for 229 after electing to bat.
On a pitch easy for batting, the team began well with an 86-run second wicket stand between Virat Singh (49) and Subhransu Senapati (44).
Sai Kishore gave South the breakthrough when he had Senapati stumped before Washington Sundar had Virat playing on. Suddenly, East collapsed from 108 for one to 143 for eight in the space of 14 overs, with Sai Kishore and pacer V. Kaverappa picking up two more wickets each.
Akash Deep (44) and Mura Singh (33) gave some hope for East when they wielded the long handle to good effect, adding 74 off 42 balls for the ninth wicket, slogging seven sixes between them to take East past 200, but it was not enough in the end.
The scores:
East Zone 229 in 46 overs (Virat Singh 49, Subhransu Senapati 44, Akash Deep 44, Mura Singh 33, V. Koushik 3/37, R. Sai Kishore 3/45) lost to South Zone 230/5 in 44.2 overs (Mayank Agarwal 84, B. Sai Sudharsan 53, N. Jagadeesan 32).
North East Zone 164 in 49 overs (Ashish Thapa 31, Kamsha Yangfo 35, Aditya Sarvate 3/19) lost to Central Zone 165/2 in 33 overs (Shivam Chaudhary 85 n.o., Yash Dubey 72).