Group A
Tushar Deshpande took his season tally to 13 wickets as he picked four in a game where Mumbai bowled out Puducherry for just 67 and chased it down comfortably. He finished with figures of 4/11 in 5 overs while Shams Mulani bagged 3/19. In the other low-scorer in the group, Dharmendrasinh Jadeja picked 5 for 16 against Odisha. Though Odisha were bundled out for 99, they made Saurashtra work for their win, which came with only four wickets to spare.
Kerala’s fast-bowling pair of Akhin Sathar (3/27) and Akhil Scaria (3/11) made their team’s modest total of 231 seem massive for Tripura, as they lost by 119 runs. In Alur, failure to combat left-arm spin was the undoing of Sikkim as Railways duo Akash Pandey and Raj Choudhary picked six wickets between them and conceded just 43 runs in 19 overs.
Group B
Vidarbha captain Atharva Taide hit 10 fours and a six in a 46-ball knock of 70 as he helped chase down 111 against Jharkhand in just the 14th over. In Jaipur, Siddharth Mhatre (87 off 74) and Nikhil Naik (71* off 82) added 136 runs for the fifth wicket to revive Maharashtra’s chase against Meghalaya.
Shashank Singh put an incredible all-round effort – following up his scintillating 113-ball 152 with figures of 5 for 20 in 5 overs, in Chhattisgarh’s 88-run win over Manipur. In chase of Hyderabad’s 210, Services recovered from 29/3 in 10.1 overs to secure a six-wicket win. Services captain Rajat Paliwal (77 off 101) and Vineet Dhankhar (78 off 76) led the way.
Group C
Devdutt Padikkal’s incredible run of form continued as he smashed a 57-ball 93, with 9 fours and 5 sixes, against Bihar. He and Nikin Jose (69 off 73) nullified Sakibul Gani’s first-innings 100 as Karnataka secured their fourth successive win. Himanshu Rana (136 off 132) and Rahul Tewatia (80 off 42) piled on the runs and Harshal Patel (5 for 24) then derailed Mizoram’s chase in Haryana’s massive win.
Jammu & Kashmir captain Shubham Khajuria slammed a century and his bowlers followed up with a fine performance to help them beat Delhi. While Rasikh Salam picked four, Abid Mushtaq got three to earn a big 75-run victory. In a high-scoring game in Ahmedabad, Chattisgarh had all of their top four batter hits fifties to reach 305 for 8. Uttarakhand responded similarly, with four of their top-five getting such scores to snare the big target.
Group D
In a game where bowlers dominated for large parts, Abhijeet Tomar’s 124 off 115 proved to be the difference in Rajasthan’s 38-run victory over Andhra. Rishi Dhawan and Mayank Dagar picked four wickets apiece as Himachal Pradesh bowled out Assam for 121. In reply, Sumeet Verma smashed 6 fours and 4 sixes on his way to an unbeaten 51 off just 20 balls which secured the eight-wicket win.
Urvil Patel followed his 41-ball 100 with an 83-ball 86 while Kshitij Patel hit unbeaten 83 as Gujarat chased down UP’s 233/8 in the 38th over.
Group E
Sanvir Singh (74 off 91) and Ramandeep Singh (80 off 50) revived a wobbly start with the bat for Punjab before the bowlers chipped in, in unison to power their 67-run win over Goa in Mumbai.
Tamil Nadu recovered from 52 for 6, through Dinesh Karthik’s 51-ball 68 and Shahrukh Khan’s 31 off 39 to post 162. Then the trio of T Natarajan, Varun Chakravarthy and R Sai Kishore ran through Baroda’s line-up to bundle them out for 124 in the 24th over. Madhya Pradesh’s Kumar Kartikeya picked four wickets but Abhimanyu Easwaran hit 73 to push Bengal to 254/8. As it turned out, it was far more than what they needed on the day as MP folded for 61. Left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed finished with exceptional figures of 3.4-1-7-4 and Akash Deep got 6-0-8-3.
