New Delhi: Vidarbha rode on Aman Mokhade’s fifth century of this season’s Vijay Hazare Trophy to enter the final with a six-wicket win over defending champions Karnataka in Bengaluru on Thursday.
Mokhade’s 131 off 122 balls was supported by R Samarth’s 76 not out from 69 balls as Vidarbha chased down a 281-run target.
Karnataka were bowled out for 280 in 49.4 overs after fifties from Karun Nair and KL Shrijith.
Vidarbha, who beat Karnataka for the first time in the 50-over domestic competition, will face the winner of Punjab vs Saurashtra clash in the final on Sunday.
Karanataka were prevented from going close to the 300-run mark by pacer Darshan Nalkande (5/48) who ensured they got bowled put in the death overs.
In their chase, Vidarbha lost opener Atharva Taide early, but his partner Mokhade batted with confidence to notch up his hundred in 101 balls.
Solid partnerships
Mokhade built two solid partnerships that took the close to victory, the first ofwhich was a 99-run second wicket stand with Dhruv Shorey (47) followed by 147 runs for the third wicket with Samarth.
The 24-year-old Mokhade flicked pacer Vidyadhar Patil for a boundary to reach the triple figures before being caught by Devdutt Padikkal inside the circle.
But by then he had put Vidarbha in control of the run chase after Karnataka had ebbed and flowed to post a competitive total.
Karnataka openers Mayank Agarwal and Devdutt Padikkal were slow off the blocks and were dismissed cheaply but Nair, Prabhakar and Shrijith all produced handy knocks.
But Nair and Shrijith were removed within six runs of each other to reduce Karnataka to 193 for five.
Shreyas Gopal (36) and Abhinav Manohar (26) added 55 runs for the sixth wicket to pull Karnataka towards 300 but were pegged back after a flurry of wickets in the later stages.
Comments are closed.