Tamil Nadu and Karnataka secured victories in the semi-final round of the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 and set up a riveting clash for the finale on Monday November 22 in Delhi. The two South Indian giants will play a repeat clash of 2019-20 final when Karnataka came out on top by just 1 run.
For Tamil Nadu, the route to make the finals became easy by the end of the first half as their bowlers dominated the show and bundled out Hyderabad for just 90 inside 19 overs.
Saravana Kumar ended with a five-fer (5/21) off his 3.3 overs, while Murugan Ashwin (2/13) and M Mohammed (2/12) took two wickets apiece. An allround bowling display never allowed the Hyderabad batting unit to get going. Only one of their batters – Tanay Thyagarajan (25) – entered the double digits on the day.
With the bowlers having set up the win, Tamil Nadu made it through to the goal post with eight wickets in hand. They lost two early wickets, but then Sai Sudharsan (34*) and skipper Vijay Shankar (43*) batted responsibly to finish off the proceedings.
Rakshann Readdi (2/23) dismissed the two Tamil Nadu openers, but there were hardly any runs for Hyderabad bowlers to play with.
The other semi-final was closer than the first one as Karnataka sneaked through by just 4 runs against Vidarbha, who fell painfully short of the 177-run target.
Karnataka defended their score of 176/7, thanks to tight spells from Vidyadhar Patil (1/29), KC Cariappa (2/27). Others also entered the wickets column, but these two, with their miserly acts, ensured Vidarbha were always playing catch-up to Karnataka. Patil deserves applause for successfully managing to defend the 14 runs that Vidarbha required off the last over, giving away just 9 runs under pressure.
Vidarbha’s innings included promising blitz from Atharva Taide (32), Ganesh Satish (31), Apoorv Wankhade (27*) and Akshay Karnewar (22), but no one played a knock of real substance which would’ve taken them home.
Karnataka had two such batters in their line-up as captain Manish Pandey (54) and Rohan Kadam (87) batted superbly in the first half.
Vidarbha’s Darshan Nalkande took 4 for 28 to bring his team back in the contest after Karnataka reached 132/0 at one stage. But eventually, an indifferent batting performance hurt Vidarbha.
