Debutants Aditya Thakare and Mohit Raut made an immediate impact to help Vidarbha restrict Madhya Pradesh to 136 for 9 in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy Twenty20 cricket tournament at the Holkar Stadium in Indore on Friday.
Vidarbha’s new skipper Akshay Wakhare, who replaced injured regular skipper Ganesh Satish, won the toss and opted to field first in the third match of the Elite Group D league phase.
Wakhare’s first major decision as the captain of the side proved correct as Vidarbha raised their level of play and put the hosts on the back foot with some tidy bowling and sharp fielding.
Medium-pacer Aditya Thakare, who broke into the side in place of Nachiket Bute, lived up to the expectations of the team management with outstanding spell of seam and swing bowling.
The tall and lanky speedster made an early breakthrough by sending MP opener Arpit Gaud to the pavilion in the very first over of his spell. Thakare forced Gaud to edge and Wadkar made no mistake in the slip cordon. Thakare, who had made his Ranji Trophy debut in the final against Delhi at the same venue three seasons ago, ended up with a dream spell of 4-0-19-1.
Another debutant Mohit Raut also impressed. He got rid of MP’s in-form batsman Rajat Patidar (50: 41 balls, 6×4) to break the shackles.
However, the most successful bowler for Vidarbha turned out to be Yash Thakur. The young paceman captured 3 wickets conceding just 25 runs.
The find of the season Darshan Nalkande continued to dazzle. The seamer did not take a wicket in the first spell but returned back in the death overs to grab a couple of wickets and checked the opposition’s run of flow.
With these two wickets, Nalkande, a member of the Kings XI Punjab team in the IPL, took his wickets’ tally to 10 in three matches in the tournament.
Hosts MP, who won one match and lost one so far, could manage to score just 39 runs in the last five overs and lost five wickets.
Vidarbha needed to win this match against MP to stay in contention for a berth in the knock-outs. Vidarbha had lost by three wickets in the opener against Rajasthan on January 11 and on Wednesday the former Ranji Trophy champions lost by 79 runs against Saurashtra.
Vidarbha’s Playing XI: Akshay Wakhare (captain), Apoorv Wankhade, Jitesh Sharma (WK), Akshay Wadkar, Akshay Karnewar, Siddhesh Wath, Aditya Thakare, Atharva Taide, Darshan Nalkande, Yash Thakur, Mohit Raut.
Brief scores
Madhya Pradesh 136 for 9 in 20 overs (Rajat Patidar 50, Rakesh Thakur 32, Rishabh Chouhan 15 not out, Venkatesh Iyer 14; Yash Thakur 3-25, Darshan Nalkande 2-27, Aditya Thakare 1-19, Mohit Raut 1-8) vs Vidarbha.
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