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Friday, October 25, 2019

Vijay Hazare Finals - cheer for Tamil Nadu


Shivam Dube, who bats left-handed and is a right-arm medium pacer, has been chosen for his ability to hit big and bowl seam-up at a brisk pace, a readymade replacement for the injured Hardik Pandya.  Before you read further – do you know of the finals between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka at Bengaluru ?  .. ..

In the din of IPL – most domestic Cricket would be forgotten – gone are the days when Triplicanites used to follow Palayampatti Shield… after the Pongal Tests of Chepauk ….. ODI treat came years later to Chennai – in between the limited overs tourney most enjoyed was Deodhar Trophy held since 1973 – the 50 over match between Zones… Remember in 1980-81 Deodhar match at Chepauk, Thirumalai Echampadi Srinivasan shred to pieces West bowling scoring a masterly 129 outclassing Krish Srikkanth, and eventually getting selected for that tour of Australia – Newzealand… that was an innings of class written all over. Then there was the KS Subbaiah Pillai trophy – the One day tournament between State sides.   Today it is Vijay Hazare Trophy finals !

38 teams played the league phase.  Chandigarh competed in the tournament for the first time. The tournament retained the same format as the previous edition of the competition.  It  had four groups, with nine teams each in Groups A, B and ten teams in Group C and the Plate Group.  The 2019–20 Vijay Hazare Trophy is the 18th season of the Vijay Hazare Trophy, a List A cricket tournament in India.  Seventeen out of the first thirty matches that were scheduled to be played across all four groups were abandoned or finished in a no result.  Kerala's Sanju Samson scored the fastest double century in List A cricket.  It was the highest individual total in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, with an unbeaten 212 runs from 129 balls.  After the final group matches, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Karnataka, Mumbai and Punjab finished in the top five places across groups A and B. They were joined by Puducherry in the knockout stage, who finished top of the Plate Group.  The first semi-final saw Karnataka beat Chhattisgarh by nine wickets, with ten overs to spare, after Devdutt Padikkal scored 92 runs.  In the second semi-final, the match was delayed due to a wet outfield, and eventually shortened to 40 overs per side. Tamil Nadu went on to beat Gujarat by five wickets, with Shahrukh Khan making an unbeaten fifty, to advance to the final.

Five hundred-plus runs with the bat. Eleven wickets with the ball -  direct hit to run out Uttar Pradesh's Piyush Chawla in the Vijay Hazare Trophy semi-final on Thursday. All of this, despite a family bereavement midway through the tournament.  B Aparajith's paternal grandfather passed away on the eve of Tamil Nadu's Group C clash against Railways in Jaipur. But the allrounder stayed back with the team and produced a brilliant all-round performance - 4 for 30 and 111 not out - to trump Railways.  Chasing 178 for victory, Tamil Nadu were 96 for 5 but Shahrukh Khan's 56* off 46 balls saw them pull through with an over to spare, enthralling the handful of neutral fans who turned up at the Just Cricket Academy Ground on the outskirts of Bengaluru.  Both teams had star-studded line-ups. R Ashwin, fresh off India's Test series win over South Africa, flew in on Tuesday to join the Tamil Nadu squad for the semi-final. He had M Vijay, Washington Sundar, Abhinav Mukund and captain Dinesh Karthik in his side. Gujarat, too, had their share of India cap-holders, with Axar Patel and Piyush Chawla being led by Parthiv Patel.

Let us cheer for Tamil Nadu win in the Vijay Hazare finals .. ..  Mumbai allrounder Shivam Dube has earned himself a maiden India call-up, figuring in the squad for the three-T20I series against Bangladesh at home in November. Kerala wicketkeeper-batsman Sanju Samson has got a recall, having played his only previous international game - a T20I against Zimbabwe in Harare - back in July 2015. Against Karnataka in  Vijay Hazare Trophy just over a week ago, . Dube had hit a century (118)  off 58 balls, going from fifty to hundred in a mere 17 deliveries.  He hit ten sixes during his knock, and the ball had to be replaced a fair few times.

Bangladesh, torn by striking players is to tour India.  The three T20I games will be played from November 3 to 10 in Delhi, Rajkot and Nagpur. The T20I squad also saw the return of Shardul Thakur and Yuzvendra Chahal. Thakur returned to the international fold after a year and replaced Navdeep Saini. Prasad confirmed both Saini and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who also missed the South Africa T20Is, weren't available because of fitness issues. Kohli is, however, a part of the squad for the two Tests - Indore (November 14 to 18) and Kolkata (November 22 to 26) - and will lead a side featuring the first-choice 15 from the recent series against South Africa at home. Shahbaz Nadeem, who replaced an injured Kuldeep Yadav for the final match of that series for his Test debut, was left out with the left-arm wristspinner fit for action again, so he will have to wait longer for his hat-trick ball.

Bangladesh Cricket Board president Nazmul Hassan's aggressive attitude during the Wednesday meeting between the board officials and the striking cricketers, especially his takedown of allrounder Mehidy Hasan, apparently threw the players off to start with, one of them even saying that the incident "rattled" them. One of the puzzling sidelights of the meeting came in the form of Obeid Nizam, CEO of Bangladesh Premier League side Dhaka Dynamites, attending the meeting. Nizam is neither a BCB director or a BCB employee, and raised questions of conflict of interest, as the franchise is owned by Beximco, the company where Hassan and board directors Ismail Haider Mallick and Khaled Mahmud are employed. It also left many of the board directors irate, one of them saying it was "a slap to our face".

Interesting !

With regards – S. Sampathkumar
25.10.2019




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