Mushtaq Ali Trophy : Irfan’s all-round performance ensures victory for Baroda: Irfan’s all-round performance ensures victory for Baroda : Irfan Pathan is in the news again. After playing a stellar role with the ball in the tournament opener, leading his team Baroda to a well-deserved victory against Assam, Pathan out up a good all-round show in the game against Goa, helping his team to another victory.
Put into bat by Goa, Baroda started reasonably well with the Devdhar brothers, Kedar and Mrunal opening the innings. The duo put on 64 runs in 8.3 overs for the first wicket, when the younger sibling, Mrunal, departed after scoring 16 runs off 27 deliveries.
Another 5 runs later, Kedar departed at his personal score of 39 runs off 31 deliveries, leaving the team at 69 runs for the loss of 2 wickets in 10.2 overs.
Hardik Pandya and Irfan Pathan then got together to add another 85 runs in 9.4 overs. Hardik Pandya remained unbeaten on 38 runs with 1 four and 2 sixes scored at 111.76 strike rate in 34 deliveries.
Irfan Pathan, very narrowly missing what would have been his second domestic T20 half-century, knocked 49 runs off just 29 deliveries at a strike rate of 168.97 with 3 fours and 3 sixes.
Baroda set a target of 155 runs for Goa.
Opening the bowling attack, the Baroda skipper, Irfan, successfully removed one of the openers, his Goa counterpart, Sagun Kumar (5) with just 7 runs on the board, in the final delivery of the very first over.
Later, he also went on to pick up the wicket of Reagan Pinto (11), pushing Goa to 34 runs for the loss of 4 wickets in 8.2 overs.
Unfortunately Goa never recovered from these blows and were skittled out for a mere 82 runs in 15.5 overs.
Pathan returned with the analysis of 3-0-19-2.
With this win Baroda, maintaining a clean slate with 3 wins from 3 encounters, is sitting at the top of the Group C Points Table with 12 points and +2.167 NRR.
Every outing of Irfan Pathan seems to be sending signals to the BCCI selectors who are ‘on the prowl’ to select the squad for the upcoming T20I World Cup 2016.