The ghost of the finals is still haunting over Bengal side as the formidable Bengal outfit handed over a crushing six-wicket defeat by Saurashtra team to claim the Vijay Hazare Trophy in a stimulating final played at the ACA-VDCA Stadium here on Thursday.
Bengal was bowled out for a paltry 85 as their batsmen succumbed under the pressure of some fine bowling produced by Saurashtra medium-pacer Jayesh Odedra early on in the innings. Odedra nailed down Bengal top-order by picking up the first three wickets. With this win Saurashtra claimed their maiden major title ever at the national level thus far.
Bengal lost their successive finals in the Ranji Trophy to Uttar Pradesh and Mumbai respectively before being relegated from the Elite division. They repeated the same act on Thursday, in another final, as they tamely surrendered against a much-fancied opposition after prevailing over stiff Delhi and Mumbai in the quarter final and semi-final respectively.
Nothing went right in Bengal’s favour after they decided to make first use of the track. Their batsmen lacked sheer application as they tried to smack every ball on a pitch that was keeping low. Bengal was reduced to 15 for four by the end of seventh over.
Sreevats Goswami (4), Anustup Mazumdar (2) and Manoj Tiwary (3) all made their way back to pavilion within the sixth over of their innings.
Bengal could never be able to recover from the early setbacks. Only skipper Laxmi Ratan Shukla (18) briefly held the fort with some onslaught stitching a 29-run stand with Debabrata Das (10).
Wriddhiman Saha played a lone hand towards the end and remained unbeaten on 25 but was left marooned as wickets kept falling at the other end. Odedra returned with an impressive figure of 10-1-16-4 while Rakesh Dhruv finished with 9-1-23-3.
In reply, Saurashtra attained the target in just 23 overs after facing some early music from the Bengal pacemen. S.S. Paul gave Bengal a good start as he trapped Sagar Jogyani in front of the wicket with just six runs on the board in the second over.
But skipper Jaydev Shah (17, 3x4) and Chirag Pathak (25, 4x4) combined well for the all-important 43-run partnership for the second wicket to set the victory path of Saurashtra. Sitanshu Kotak (12) and Pratik Mehta (12) completed the formalities before Paul dismissed both Shah and Pathak.
Brief Scores: Bengal: 85 in 39.2 overs (Jayesh Odedra four for 16) lost to Saurashtra: 89 for four in 23 overs.
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