Deepak Hooda, who switched last season from his home state of Baroda to Rajasthan, played a fine innings for his new team in their Vijay Hazare Trophy 2021 pre-quarter-final against Karnataka. However, his century was not even near enough to get Rajasthan to a good total as he found no support whatsoever from the other batters.
On the back of his 109 and a 33 from SV Joshi that Rajasthan could get past the 150 mark, but missed the 200 mark, eventually ending up on 199 in 41.4 overs. Hooda was the eighth wicket to fall on 193. For Karnataka, V Vyshak, who is playing his maiden domestic season, picked four wickets for 22 runs.
Chasing 200 was just a cakewalk for the Karnataka unit which is full of dynamic batters. KV Siddharth was the top scorer with an unbeaten 85 while R Samarth and Manish Pandey struck individual fifties too.
In another pre-quarterfinal match at the Jaipuria Vidhyalaya Ground in Jaipur, Uttar Pradesh, the last season’s runner’s up defeated Madhya Pradesh by five wickets to march into yet another quarterfinal.
For the north Indian team, experienced batter Akshdeep Nath and wicket-keeper batter Rinku Singh were the crusaders with the bat, both of them hitting compelling fifties.
Chasing 235 set by Madhya Pradesh, the UP team didn’t get off to a good start and were two down for only seven runs. Venkatesh Iyer struck with the ball for MP to take the third UP wicket and the chasing team was under all sorts of pressure at 43/3 before Nath paired up with Sameer Rizvi for a 58 run stand to stabilise the innings. Once Rizvi was removed courtesy of a runout, Rinku teamed up with Nath for a match-winning 97 run stand for the fifth wicket.
Though Nath missed out on a golden opportunity to score a century, getting out on 78, Rinku made sure he not only reached his List-A fifty but also took his team home unbeaten, He was supported by India international Bhuvneshwar Kumar who scored 16*.
In the third and last pre-quarterfinal Vidarbha bailed out of what could have been a devastating loss to them at the hands of Plate Group winner Tripura. Tripura after managing to restrict Vidarbha for 258/7 in the 50 overs, started well in their chase as their openers scored 96 for the first wicket.
Even the second wicket partnership of 49 runs was in line with their target. At 145-1 after 33 overs with two set batsmen at the crease and only 113 runs needed of 102 balls, anyone would have backed Tripura to go all the way and cause an upset. But it wasn’t to be.
Yash Thakur’s belligerent spell not only saw the back of the two set batters in Bikram Kumar Das and Samit Gohel but also removed Tripura skipper Pawan KB and was instrumental in the run out of RA Dey, bringing the Northeastern team down to 158-5 in the 38th over.
From there onwards, the only thing remaining was formalities and it was completed by the remaining Vidrabha bowlers in Darshan Nalkande and Atharva Taide who picked three and one wickets respectively.
Courtesy of these wins, the three teams have now made it to the Quarterfinals of the Vijay Hazare Trophy. In the first set of quarterfinals, Karnataka will face Tamil Nadu on December 21 at the K L Saini Stadium in Jaipur while on the same day, Himachal will face Uttar Pradesh at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur.
In the next set of quarterfinals on December 22, Kerala will take on Services at the K L Saini Stadium while Vidarbha will be up against Saurashtra at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur.