Karnataka captain Manish Pandey had a brilliant last half an hour of play against Bengal in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy quarter-final match in Delhi when he first hit the bull’s eye to run out Akash Deep on the final ball of the innings and then hit the winning stroke for his side in the Super Over.
Karnataka and Bengal were involved in a nail-biting encounter on Thursday. After batting first, Karnataka rode on some brisk batting display from Karun Nair to put 160/5 in 20 overs on the board. Karun scored an aggressive 29-ball 55 that included three sixes and four fours.
Later, Bengal lost a few wickets at regular succession and were 51/3 when Writtick Chatterjee and Kaif Ahmed took on the onus on themselves and stitched a valuable partnership of 49 runs for the fourth wicket. But Kaif’s dismissal saw a couple of more wickets going down, leaving Bengal in a spot of bother at 108/6.
Ritwik Chowdhury then took up the responsibility and steadied the ship for the side after holding the innings from one end.
Later, Bengal needed 20 off the last over and Ritwik Chowdhury unveiled an exciting batting display as he scored 13 in the first three deliveries while Akash Deep who had just joined him in the middle scored six runs in the next two deliveries bringing the equation down to 1 needed off 1.
Akash Deep pushed this delivery to steal a single towards the off side but a brilliant throw from Manish Pandey who was stationed inside the circle scalped his wicket to end the match in a tie and take it into the Super Over.
The Bengal side then could only manage to score 5 runs as they lost both the wickets and it took Pandey just two deliveries to wrap up the game and help his side make a place in the semis.