Mushtaq Ali Trophy : Rahil Shah’s ‘five-for’ ensures victory for Tamil Nadu: Left-arm spinner, 30 year old, Rahil Shah of Tamil Nadu ensured a victory in their encounter against Bengal in the Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2016, played at Vidharbha Cricket Association Stadium, Nagpur.
Shah claimed his maiden T20 ‘five-wicket’ haul in the match by picking up the wickets of Pankaj Shaw (3), Debabrata Das (5), Mohd Shami (1), Ashok Dinda (6) and Pragyan Ojha (0).
Winning the toss, Bengal opted to bowl. Backed by a well-made 41 runs off 37 deliveries by Abhinav Mukund and his 51-run fourth wicket partnership in 6.1 overs, enabled Tamil Nadu to notch up 151 runs for the loss of 8 wickets in their allotted 20 overs.
Veer Pratap Singh (4-0-15-3), Mohd Shami (4-0-30-2) and Pragyan Ojha (4-0-31-2) did well to keep the Tamil Nadu score within a manageable limit.
Chasing 152 for a win, Bengal batsmen literally failed to make any impression whatsoever and lost the advantage provided by their bowlers. Losing 2 wickets for just 9 runs in 2.1 overs, Srivats Goswami and Sudip Chatterjee (18), tried to bring some decency in the score with their third-wicket partnership of 49 runs in 7.2 overs.
While Goswami waged a lone battle from one end, wickets were falling like nine pins at the other and soon he ran out of partners. Bengal batsmen could hold on only till 15.5 overs and succumbing to a precision bowling effort by Rahil Shah, ended their innings with just 82 runs on the board.
Goswami’s efforts fetched 31 runs off 30 deliveries with 2 fours and a six.
Tamil Nadu won the match by 69 runs, while Rahil Shah returned with an excellent bowling analysis of 2.5-0-12-5.
With this win, Tamil Nadu have 8 points from two games, while Bengal have 4 points from equal number of games.