Kolkata, Nov 5: Domestic giants Mumbai produced a near-perfect performance to beat Himachal Pradesh by three wickets in the final and won their maiden Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy title at Eden Gardens, on Saturday.
Put into bat first, Himachal posted a total of 143/8 in 20 overs with Ekant Sen (37 off 29) top-scoring for them. In reply, Mumbai chased down the target in 19.3 overs with three wickets in hand.
Chasing a moderate total, Mumbai were off to a poor start as Rishi Dhawan dismissed Prithvi Shaw (11) and Ajinkya Rahane (1) in the Power-play.
However, in-form Shreyas Iyer (34 off 26) stitched two valuable partnerships with Yashasvi Jaiswal (27) and Sarfaraz Khan (36 not out off 31) to take Mumbai to a dominant position in the game. Tanush Kotian hit a six over the fine-leg boundary to finish the game for Mumbai.
Earlier, Himachal struggled against Mohit Awasthi’s swing and lost two early wickets. Prashant Chopra and Nikhil Gangta gave their team a brief revival but that was undone quickly by Tanush Kotian’s triple strike in the middle overs.
Akash Vasisth (25), Ekant Sen (37) and Mayank Dagar (21) scored valuable runs in the late overs to help the side recover from 58 for 6 in the 10th over to end with 143 for 8 in 20 overs, which wasn’t enough in the end. (IANS)
