Inter-Zonal T20 tournament, day 6- round-up: Karnataka chase down 121 in 11.4 overs to be crowned as South Zone champions

Skipper Vinay Kumar led from the front and helped Karnataka chase down 121 in just 11.4 overs to win the South Zone Inter-Zonal T20 tournament. Going into the final day of the tournament, three teams, Hyderabad, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were in contention to be crowned as South Zone champions.

Karnataka needed to post a huge win to overtake Hyderabad in the net run-rate and they managed to restrict Goa to just 120/7 in 20 overs. To everyone’s surprise, skipper Vinay Kumar opened the batting with Mayank Agarwal and both the batsmen went for the kill right from the word go.

Agarwal departed in the second over and Vinay, in the company of K Gowtham put on 41 runs in less than 4 overs before debutant Amulya Pandrekar dismissed Gowtham off his very first ball, Pandrekar also struck again by dismissing India’s Karun Nair for just 4. Against the run of play, Vinay was dismissed in the next over and it looked like Karnataka will settle for a win in 20 overs compromising their NRR. But, Pavan Deshpande came out all guns blazing and ended up scoring an unbeaten 13-ball 32 to steer Karnataka home in the 12^th over.

Much to Karnataka’s delight, Hyderabad lost to Andhra by 11 runs and went out of the title race and it came to Tamil Nadu’s chase against Kerala. Needing 129 to chase in 7 overs to win the tournament, Tamil Nadu decided not to go for it and eventually won the match by 5 wickets with 8 balls to spare.

In the Central Zone, Uttar Pradesh’s disastrous run continued as they lost their third consecutive match when Madhya Pradesh got the better of UP by 26 runs. Assam’s Pritam Das picked up 5 wickets giving away just 9 runs to help Assam beat Tripura in the East Zone tournament.

Here is a round-up of what happened on the sixth day of the Inter-Zonal T20 tournament.

Central Zone:

Madhya Pradesh 161/9 in 20 overs (Sohraab Dhaliwal 51, Naman Ojha 37, Ankit Rajpoot 4/29, Piyush Chawla 3/37) beat Uttar Pradesh 131 in 19.1 overs (Eklavya Dwivedi 33, Ishwar Pandey 2/24, Ankit Sharma 2/27) by 26 runs.

Chhatisgarh 126/7 (Shubham Agarwal 36, A Khare 31, Amit Mishra 3/16) beat Railways 120/8 in 20 overs (Saurabh Wakaskar 29, Mahesh Rawat 27, Shubham Agarwal 3/6) by 6 runs.

East Zone:

Tripura 85 in 16.5 overs (Mura Singh 32, Pritam Das 5/9, Abu Nechim 2/10) lost to Assam 86/3 in 12.1 overs (Sibsankar Roy 35*, Rishav Das 21) by 7 wickets.

Bengal 145/7 in 20 overs (Shreevats Goswami 33, Writtick Chatterjee 33, Paresh Patel 2/18, Deepak Behera 2/16) beat Odisha 121 in 18.4 overs ( S Senapati 41, Abhishek Yadav 23, Sayan Ghosh 3/25) by 24 runs.

South Zone:

Goa 120/7 in 20 overs (Swapnil Asnodkar 34, Keenan 18, Sreenath Aravind 4/29) lost to Karnataka 121/4 in 11.4 overs (Vinay Kumar 34, Pavan Deshpande 32*) by 6 wickets.

Andhra 140 in 19.2 overs (Hanuma Vihari 49, Ricky Bhui 21, Md Siraj 4/24) beat Hyderabad 129 in 20 overs (Tanmay Agarwal 49, Swaroop 5/19, Girinath Reddy 3/19) by 11 runs.

Kerala 128/6 in 20 overs (Sachin Baby 53*, Aswin Crist 3/19, R Sathish 2/16) lost to Tamil Nadu (129/5 in 18.4 overs (Baba Aparajith 51*, Vijay Shankar 18, Sandeep Warrier 2/18) by 5 wickets.