Vijay Hazare Trophy: Kerala is struggling to chase the target of 256 runs given by Railways in the Vijay Hazare Trophy. At the final whistle at Kini Sports Arena ground, Chikanahalli’s score was 155 runs for 4 wickets in 36 overs. Captain Sanju Samson (64) and Shreyas Gopal (46) are at the crease. Earlier, Yuvraj Singh’s century (121 not out off 136 balls) took Railways to the best score. Vaishakh Chandran took two wickets for Kerala.
Kerala had a bad start. The team lost four wickets on the score of 59 runs. Rohan Kunnumal (0), Sachin Baby (9) and Salman Nisar (2) could not even touch double figures. Only Krishna Prasad (29) protested a little. Himanshu Rana took two wickets. After this the Sanju-Shreyas alliance did the rescue. So far Sanju has hit three sixes and fours in 56 balls. Shreyas has five fours in his account. Both have added 102 runs so far.
Earlier, Railways got an initial shock as soon as they came to the crease after losing the toss. Railways had 19 runs on the scoreboard when openers Shivam Chaudhary (3) were dismissed by Akhin and Vivek Singh (11) was dismissed by Vaisakh Chandran. But Pratham Singh and Yuvraj Singh together added 148 runs in the partnership for the third wicket and dismissed him.
Pratham Singh, who scored 61 runs off 77 balls, was himself dismissed by Vaishakh Chandran and broke the partnership, but later wicket-keeper batsman Upendra Yadav (31 runs off 27 balls) provided good support to Yuvraj Singh, and The railway reached good condition. score. Upendra Yadav was dismissed by Akhil Skaria and Ashutosh Sharma (2) was dismissed by Basil Thambi. He remained unbeaten after scoring seven runs. For Kerala, Vaishakh Chandran took two wickets for 33 runs in 10 overs.
Kerala tops Group A with five wins from five matches. Kerala came first in the group after Mumbai suffered an unexpected defeat against Tripura recently. With 20 points from each of the six matches, Kerala topped Group A on the back of a better net run rate (+1.916) than Mumbai (+1.743). Railways are in fourth place with 12 points from six matches.