Vijay Hazare Trophy: MS Dhoni's Jharkhand scrape through to quarter-finals

Mahendra Singh Dhoni-led Jharkhand entered the quarterfinals of the Vijay Hazare Trophy with a six-wicket thrashing of Jammu and Kashmir in a Group D clash in Kolkata on Monday, PTI reported.

In order to qualify, Jharkhand not only needed a big win, but also required Hyderabad to lose against Services in another clash in the group. Hyderabad cleared one hurdle for Jharkhand after losing to Services by five wickets, having been bowled out for 88.

Jharkhand went about the other task in complete earnestness. A five-wicket haul by Shahbaz Nadeem helped Jharkhand bowl out Jammu & Kashmir for 184.

In their chase, Jharkhand rode on a fine 78-run knock by Kumar Deobrat. Dhoni (19 off 17 balls) also provided some late pyrotechnics to take Jharkhand to a convincing victory.

Dhoni speaks with J&K players

After the match, Dhoni paid a visit to the J&K dressing room to speak with the players. Dhoni spent 15 minutes in the opposition pavilion, PTI reported.

“Mahibhai has always been helpful on cricketing matters. That’s his nature,” J&K skipper Pervez Rasool said. “It was a great opportunity to learn a thing or two from Mahibhai. He is a great guy. I played alongside him for India (Rasool’s skipper in his brief stint with India team were Suresh Raina and Virat Kohli),” he added.

“I told him (Dhoni) few of our youngsters want to meet him for five minutes and within no time he obliged us and said ‘I will go from here’.”

“It was a great opportunity for our youngsters who have seen Dhoni only on TV... They saw Mahibhai for the first time today. Mahi went inside and answered their cricketing queries.”

Mumbai’s record chase goes in vain

Mumbai chased down Goa’s target of 99 runs in only 34 balls to register the second-fastest run-chase in List A cricket in terms of run-rate and number of balls.

They reached the target with eight wickets to spare. But the win was not prove enough for them to qualify for the quarterfinals, as they finished third in Group C.

Rohit Sharma, who is making a comeback following a lengthy injury lay-off, failed to fire for the second successive game, as he fell for four.

Aditya Tare smashed a 11-ball 38*, while Suryakumar Yadav was unbeaten on 40 off 11 deliveries to take Mumbai home with 266 balls to spare.

Kaif tries to scrap game after tiff with umpire

Chhattisgarh captain Mohammad Kaif on Monday wanted to pull out of their Group D match against Karnataka at the Eden Gardens following a tiff with the umpire over the dismissal of opener Mayank Agarwal, IANS reported.

The match referee had to intervene after eight minutes of play was wasted with Kaif finally deciding to change his stance and take to the ground again, the report stated.

Agarwal had nicked one off Omkar Verma, which Kaif, standing at first slip claimed to have caught cleanly. The leg umpire adjudged Agarwal not out forcing Kaif to lose his cool and ask how the leg umpire could see a right-hander edging a ball to first slip.

Quarter-finals advanced by a day due to Holi

The two quarter-finals of the Vijay Hazare Trophy that were scheduled to be held on Monday, March 13 have now been advanced by a day and will be played on Sunday, March 12. The BCCI CEO Rahul Johri said that the change of schedule happened as it would have been difficult to conduct matches on Holi, which is a public holiday.

Brief scores

Group A

• Haryana 266/5 in 50 overs (Rahul Tewatia 78*, Nitin Saini 67) beat Baroda 181 in 40.1 overs (Kedar Devdhar 81; Ashish Hooda 3/32) by 85 runs
• Odisha 240 in 49.5 overs (Govinda Poddar 120, Biplab Samantray 48; Siddarth Kaul 3/32) beat Punjab 171 in 30 overs (Anmolpreet Singh 58; Dhiraj Singh 5/49) by 69 runs.
• Vidarbha 273/9 in 50 overs (Jitesh Sharma 83, Ganesh Satish 73; Pritam Das 3/52) beat Assam 169 in 41.1 overs (Rishav Kalapkanti Das 57; Abhishek Chaurasia 6/37) by 104 runs.

Group B

• Tamil Nadu 337/8 in 50 overs (Dinesh Karthik 81, Ganga Sridhar Raju 77; Udiyan Bose 4/73) beat Tripura 75 in 18.2 overs (Smit Patel 22; Aswin Crist 5/29) by 262 runs.
• Delhi 220 in 48.4 overs (Unmukt Chand 78, Himmat Singh 54; Ankit Rajpoot 3/32) beat Uttar Pradesh 108 in 21.3 overs (Rinku Singh 43; Kulwant Khejroliya 5/22) by 112 runs.
• Kerala 297/9 in 50 overs (Vishnu Vinod 93, Mohammed Azharuddeen 73, Sanju Samson 51; Shresth Nirmohi 3/50) beat Himachal Pradesh 255 in 47.1 overs (Sumeet Verma 59, Ankit Kaushik 59, Prashant Chopra 50; Fabid Ahmed 4/38) by 42 runs.

Group C

• Goa 95 in 35 overs (Abhishek Nayar 4/23, Dhawal Kulkarni 3/17) lost to Mumbai 99/2 in 5.4 overs (Suryakumar Yadav 40*, Aditya Tare 38*) by 8 wickets.
• Team Rajasthan 235/7 in 50 overs (Mahipal Lomror 67, Tajinder Singh 60; P Vijaykumar 3/17) lost to Andhra 236/2 in 39.5 overs (Hanuma Vihari 135*, Prasanth Kumar 62) by 8 wickets.
• Bengal 168 in 49.1 overs (Abhimanyu Easwaran 37, Aamir Gani 37; Jasprit Bumrah 3/27) lost to Gujarat 172/3 in 28 overs (Parthiv Patel 88*) by 7 wickets.

Group D

• Chhattisgarh 199 in 48.5 overs (Abhimanyu Chauhan 58, Mohammad Kaif 43; Vinay Kumar 3/19) lost to Karnataka 200/7 in 37.3 overs (Mayank Agarwal 66, Manish Pandey 34; Shubham Thakur 3/38) by three wickets.
• Jammu & Kashmir 184 in 43 overs (Owais Amin Shah 59, Parvez Rasool 45; Shahbaz Nadeem 5/42) lost to Jharkhand 185/4 in 35 overs (Kumar Deobrat 78) by six wickets.
• Hyderabad 88 in 28.5 overs (Chama Miling 32; Diwesh Pathania 4/21) lost to Services 92/5 in 20.2 overs by five wickets.

Teams in quarter-finals

• Group A: Vidarbha, Baroda
• Group B: Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra
• Group C: Bengal, Gujarat
• Group D: Karnataka, Jharkhand