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SMAT 2021: Abhishek Sharma, Virat Singh score centuries, Padikkal unbeaten 99 to make it left-hander's day

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It wouldn't be wrong to say that today was a left hander's day in the ongoing Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy 2021 as not one but four left-handers in Jharkhand's Virat Singh, Punjab's Abhishek Sharma, Karnataka's Devdutt Padikkal and Bengal's Shreevats Goswami powered their teams to victories by some memorable performances with the bat.  

Virat Singh, who, only at the age of 23, has toiled in first-class cricket for six years making his debut in 2014, made a brilliant 103 off 53 balls hitting 12 fours and three sixes at the Javadpur University Ground against Assam. On the back of his hundred and some quick runs by Sourabh Tiwary and Kumar Deobrat at the death, Jharkhand set an imposing target of 231 to chase for Assam. 

Assam team, even after some brilliant shots from the young gun Riyan Parag couldn’t quite get the chase going and managed just 187 runs from their 20 overs, losing the game by a huge margin of 51 runs. 

Brief Scores: Jharkhand 233-3 in 20.0 overs (Virat Singh- 103 not out, Pritam Das-2/40) beat Assam 182-7 in 20.0 (Riyan Parag- 67, Monu Kumar- 3/23) by 51 runs. Check Full Scores here   

In a Group A game at Alur, Karnataka, Punjab’s Abhishek Sharma hit a scintillating hundred, making 197 off 62 balls with the help of five fours and nine destructive sixes. He was supported equally well by Prabhsimran Singh who scored 63 off 39. Courtesy of these brilliant knocks, Punjab set a target of 201 for the Railways who crumbled under it like a p[ack of cards, getting bowled out for a meager 83 and losing the game quite badly by 117 runs. 

Brief Scores: Punjab 200-4 in 20.0 overs (Abhishek Sharma- 107, Dhrushant Soni- 2/29) beat Railways 83-10 in 17.1 overs (Pradeep Poojar-15, Harpreet Brar- 4/22) by 117 runs. Check Full Scores here  

In another Group A game, much-fancied and much talked about before the tournament, the Uttar Pradesh team suffered a shocking defeat at the hands of Jammu Kashmir, their third in three matches. With this loss, the north Indian team is now out of contention of making it to the Knockout rounds. Suresh Raina tested another failure as he got out leg before wicket for a duck. 

Brief Scores: Uttar Pradesh 124-5 in 20.0 overs (Priyam Garg-35, Mujtaba Yousuf-3/14) lost to Jammu and Kashmir 126-2 in 15.0 overs (Abdul Samad- 54 not out, Mohsin Khan- 2/17) by eight wickets. Check Full Scores here  

Another shocker was in-store today as another much fancied and going pretty well side of Group C, Gujarat were rocked by Himachal Pradesh in the absence of their premium batsman Priyank Panchal. It was shocking in the sense that Gujarat, which prides itself on being an all-around heavy team wasn’t able to chase 142 at the Moti Bagh ground in Baroda.

Brief Scores: Himachal Pradesh 141-5 in 20.0 overs (Rishi Dhawan 43, Axar Patel- 1/16) beat Gujarat 115-10 in 19.4 overs (Piyush Chawla-39, Vaibhav Arora- 3/16) by 26 runs. Check Full Scores here  

In the third game of Group A, Karnataka, who were beaten comprehensively in their last game by Punjab, beat Tripura today to compensate for it. Devdutt Padikkal was the star of the day as he hit an unbeaten 99. 

Brief Scores: Karnataka 167-5 in 20.0 overs (Devdutt Padikkal-99 not out, Rana Dutta- 2/41) beat  Tripura 157-4 in 20.0 overs (Manisankar Murasingh 61 not out, Praveen Dubey-1/20) by 10 runs. Check Full Scores here  

Uttarakhand, one of the new inductees in the Indian domestic set up and played Plate Group games in Ranji Trophy in 2018 shocked another heavyweight Maharashtra which has in their ranks the likes of Kedar Jadhav, Rahul Tripathi, and Ruturaj Gaikwad. The team from the Himalayas beat Tripathi’s side convincingly by five wickets, with Jay Bista, the opener playing a brilliant knock of 69 of 51 balls to see his team through. 

Brief Scores: Maharashtra 141-4 in 20.0 overs (Kedar Jadhav- 67, Dikshanshu Negi- 1/16) lose to Uttarakhand 145-4 in 18.1 overs (Jay Bista-69,  Shamshuzama Kazi- 1/15) by six wickets. Check Full Scores here  

In the two dull games of the day, expected winners in Tamil Nadu and Baroda downed Odisha and Chhattisgarh respectively. They earned the wins quite convincingly. While Baroda beat the Central Indian side by nine wickets, Tamil Nadu lost one extra while chasing 133 to finally win the game by eight wickets. 

Lukman Meriwala continued his brilliant form with the ball for Baroda as he returned with figures of 5/8 against the Harpreet Singh led Chhattisgarh. 

Brief Scores: Odisha 132-9 in 20.0 overs (Suryakant Pradhan-23, Murugan Ashwin- 3/16) lose to Tamil Nadu 136-2 in 15.1 overs (Narayan Jagadeesan- 61, Pappu Roy-1/32) by eight wickets. Check Full Scores here  

Brief Scores: Chhattisgarh 90-10 in 17.3 overs (Shashank Chandraker-20, Lukman Meriwala- 5/8) lose to Baroda 91-1 in 12.3 overs (Kedar Devdhar-44 not out, Sourabh Majumdar- 1/12) by nine wickets. Check Full Scores here 

In the only evening encounter of 14th January, home team Bengal downed Hyderabad by six wickets at the Eden Gardens. Shreevats Goswami was the hero with the willow scoring 69 not out off 48 deliveries and guiding his team home even as experienced blokes like Manoj Tiwary and skipper Anustup Majumdar went early. Apart from Goswami's batting, his wicket keeping was at another level altogether in this match as he took some sensational catches, one of it might make Subroto Paul or for that matter, even Gurpreet Singh stand up and clap. 

Brief Scores: Hyderabad 157-10 in 20.0 overs (Tilak Varma-50, Ishan Porel- 4/24) lose to  Bengal 161-4 in 18.2 overs (Sreevats Goswami-69, T Ravi Teja- 2/28) by six wickets. Check Full Scores here


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Daily Round up | Jan 14: Vikram Rathour hints at changes in playing XI, England in front on Day 1

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