Kolkata, (Samajweekly) Domestic giants Mumbai produced a near-perfect performance to beat Himachal Pradesh by three wickets in the final and won their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy title at Eden Gardens, on Saturday.
Put into bat first, Himachal posted a total of 143/8 in 20 overs with Ekant Sen (37 off 29) top-scoring for them. In reply, Mumbai chased down the target in 19.3 overs with three wickets in hand.
Chasing a moderate total, Mumbai were off to a poor start as Rishi Dhawan dismissed Prithvi Shaw (11) and Ajinkya Rahane (1) in the Power-play. However, in-form Shreyas Iyer (34 off 26) stitched two valuable partnerships with Yashasvi Jaiswal (27) and Sarfaraz Khan (36 not out off 31) to take Mumbai to a dominant position in the game.
When Iyer got out to Vaibhav Arora in the 14th over, Mumbai were left needing only 48 runs in 40 balls. But, pacer Arora had other plans as he dismissed both Shivam Dube (7) and Aman Khan (6) in the 17th over. In the very next over, Shams Mulani got out, leaving Mumbai in a tricky position.
It was Sarfaraz Khan, who bailed Mumbai out of trouble. With 25 runs needed off 14 balls, he managed to hit a few lusty blows in the penultimate over, bringing the equation to six runs off the last over. With four needed off four, Tanush Kotian hit a six over the fine-leg boundary to finish the game for Mumbai.
Earlier, Himachal struggled against Mohit Awasthi’s swing and lost two early wickets. Prashant Chopra and Nikhil Gangta gave their team a brief revival but that was undone quickly by Tanush Kotian’s triple strike in the middle overs.
Akash Vasisth (25), Ekant Sen (37) and Mayank Dagar (21) scored valuable runs in the late overs to help the side recover from 58 for 6 in the 10th over to end with 143 for 8 in 20 overs, which wasn’t enough in the end.
Brief scores: Himachal 143/8 in 20 overs (Ekant Sen 37, Akash Vasisth 25; Tanush Kotian 3-15, Mohit Avasthi 3-21) lost to Mumbai 146/7 in 19.3 overs (Sarfaraz Khan 36 not out, Shreyas Iyer 34; Vaibhav Arora 3-27, Mayank Dagar 2-24) by 3 wickets
