Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy Match Highlights, Final: Spinners have played a vital role in lifting the trophy for Tamil Nadu

Baroda and Tamil Nadu faced off at the Sardar Patel Stadium (Ahmedabad) in the final of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2021 on Saturday night, January 31. Tamil Nadu beat their opponents Baroda by a margin of 7 wickets.

Tamil Nadu captain Dinesh Karthik won the toss and elected to field, sending Baroda to bat.

Baroda batsman Kedar Devdhar opened the scoring with a four off Tamil Nadu bowler Sai Kishore in the first ball of the innings. But the Baroda batsmen could not maintain that continuity due to the pressure of the Tamil Nadu bowlers. Baroda lost 6 wickets for 36 runs in the first nine overs, of which spinner Manimaran Siddharth took four wickets. Baroda collapsed like a house of playing cards because of his extraordinary spell. Then on the seventh wicket, Vishnu Solanki and Atit Sheth made a partnership of 58 runs and Baroda scored 120 runs for the loss of 9 wickets in 20 overs. Vishnu Solanki (49) and Atit Sheth (29) scored some runs for Baroda and Manimaran Siddharth (4-20, 4 overs) was the highest wicket-taker for Tamil Nadu.

While coming to bat for an easy target of 121, Tamil Nadu lost one wicket in six overs of the power play and picked up 38 runs. After that, because of the continuity of the batsmen they reached their goal losing 3 wickets with two overs left. Hari Nishanth (35) and Baba Aparajith (29*) were the highest scorers for them. Babashafi Pathan took a wicket for Baroda (1-23, 4 overs).

Even before the start of the game, Tamil Nadu was ahead on pen and paper. Because they have won all seven of the last 7 matches. So Baroda’s helpless surrender in the final match gave Tamil Nadu a big win by 7 wickets.

Playing XIs:

Baroda – Kedar Devdhar (c), Vishnu Solanki, Atit Sheth, Smit Patel (wk), Ninad Rathva, Karthik Kakade, Abhimanyu Rajput, Babashafi Pathan, Bhargav Bhatt, Bhanu Pania, Lukman Meriwala.

Tamil Nadu – Hari Nishanth, Baba Aparajith, Dinesh Karthik (c & wk), Shahrukh Khan, N Jagadeesan, Arun Karthik, Sonu Yadav, M Mohammed, Manimaran Siddharth, Ravisrinivasan Sai Kishore, Murugan Ashwin.

Scoreboard:

Baroda – 120/9 (20)

Fall of wickets: 1-6 (Rathva, 1.1 over), 2-22 (Devdhar, 3.5 over), 3-28 (Smit, 5.5 over), 4-28 (Bhanu, 6.2 over), 5-32 (Abhimanyu, 8.1 over), 6-36 (Karthik, 8.5 over), 7-94 (Atit, 18.2 over), 8-120 (Solanki, 19.5 over), 9-120 (Pathan, 19.6 over)

Tamil Nadu – 123/3 (18)

Fall of wickets: 1-26 (Jagadeesan, 3.5 over), 2-67 (Nishanth, 11.2 over), 3-101 (Dinesh Karthik, 16.1 over)

Result – Tamil Nadu won by 7 wickets

Player of the Match – Manimaran Siddharth

The Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy has ended but more domestic actions are coming in India. Stay updated, keep  predicting the winners & play on Baji!