Ishan Kishan was in irresistible form on Saturday as he smashed a sensational 173 runs in just 94 deliveries in Jharkhand’s 324-run victory against Madhya Pradesh in their Elite Group B match of the Vijay Hazare Trophy at the Holkar Stadium in Indore.

Ishan, captaining the Jharkhand team in the 50-over tournament, hit 19 fours and 11 sixes, at a strike-rate of 184.04, to help his team post a mammoth total of 422/9 batting first. This is the biggest total by a team in the tournament’s history. The previous best team score was 412/6, registered by Madhya Pradesh against Railways back in 2010.

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Jharkhand then bowled out Madhya Pradesh for just 98 in 18.4 overs, with right-arm fast bowler Varun Aaron (6/37) putting in an impressive performance.

As if his heroics with the bat weren’t enough, Ishan even went on to take a staggering seven catches with the gloves in Madhya Pradesh’s innings.

Ishan, who had an impressive Indian Premier League 2020 season for champions Mumbai Indians, took 72 balls to get to 102 on Saturday, before cutting loose and smashing 71 runs off the last 20 balls he faced. In fact, he took just 12 deliveries to go from 102 to 151.

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Opening the batting, the 22-year-old keeper-batsman saw his team in a spot of bother when they lost their first wicket in the third over with just 10 runs on the board. But that didn’t stop him from going after the Madhya Pradesh bowling attack.

The left-hander was dismissed in the 28th over, with Jharkhand’s score being 240/3 at the time. Half-centuries from Virat Singh, Sumit Kumar and Anukul Roy then propelled the team to an extremely strong position.

Brief scores

Jharkhand 422/9 (Ishan Kishan 173, Anukul Roy 72; Virat Singh 68; Gourav Yadav 4/73, Shubham Sharma 1/44) beat Madhya Pradesh 98 all out (Abhishek Bhandari 42; Venkatesh Iyer 23; Varun Aaron 6/37, Bal Krishna 2/8) by 324 runs.