Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Feb 27: Lack of coordination within team, inconsistency of both bowlers and batsmen and poor planning of J&K’s skipper tasted today second consecutive defeats and third in four matches of the ongoing Vijay Hazare Trophy Tournament, played at 22 Yards, Salt Lake Kolkata.
J&K who decided to field first after winning toss, the opponent team gave tough target of 368 runs by losing four wickets with power packed batting of 99 runs by opener batsman- A R Easwaran, studded 11 boundaries and one six, and unbeaten scores by Bengal skipper- Anustup Majumdar 92 runs off 84 balls helped Bengal to set a big score against J&K, whereas outstanding batting of middle order including Ritwik Roy Chowdhary (55), Kaif Ahmed (42) and Shahbaz brilliant knock of 48 runs off just 17 balls were enough to break the moral of the J&K bowlers who succeeded to take only four wickets of the opponent team.
Mujtaba Yusuf once again showed some guts to Bengal batsmen and clinched two important wickets of opener batsmen along with Umran Malik and Abid Mushtaq who took one each wicket but rest of bowlers including skipper- Parvez Rasool were failed to clinch any wicket. Rasool gave 67 runs in eight over spell.
In reply, J&K openers and one down players did nominal to chase the set target and contributed 24, 18 and 19 runs by Aadil, Henan and Usman respectively against the tough target given by Bengal. Except Shubham Khajuria’s 44 runs, studded by eight boundary showed some stiffness by facing equal balls, but ultimately, he gave his wicket to Shahbaz. Skipper- Rasool’s 50, Abid Mushtaq’s 68 and Umar Nazir’s not out 24 failed to chase the target and all the team bundled out at 286 runs in 45.3 overs.
Arnab Nandi was the wrecker in chief who took four wickets for Bengal by conceding 46 runs in his 10 overs spell, while Mukesh Kumar clinched two wickets and Shahbaz and Ishan Porel bagged one wicket each.
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