Mumbai, December 5 (IANS). Thanks to a hat-trick by captain Bhuvanveshwar Kumar, Uttar Pradesh defeated Jharkhand by 10 runs in the Group C match of Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy on Thursday. This is Uttar Pradesh’s fifth win in seven matches, while this is Jharkhand’s second defeat in seven matches.
Batting first, Uttar Pradesh team scored 160 runs for eight wickets. Rinku Singh, Priyam Garg and Sameer Rizvi had important contributions in this. Rinku scored 45 runs in 28 balls, which included eight fours. Apart from this, Garg scored 31 runs in 25 balls, which included two fours and two sixes. Whereas Rizvi scored 24 runs in 19 balls with the help of one six.
In reply, Jharkhand team, which came to bat, lost three wickets cheaply. Anukul Roy played an inning of 91 runs, as long as he was at the crease it seemed that Jharkhand would win the match from here. Even when Mohsin Khan dismissed him, Jharkhand was still in the match.
In the 16th over, Jharkhand team had scored 116 runs and aggressive batsmen Anukul and Robin Minz were at the crease. But in the 17th over, Bhuvneshwar dismissed Minz first and increased the problems for Jharkhand. He was out after scoring 11 runs. After this, he completed the hat-trick by dismissing Balakrishna and Vivekananda Tiwari on the next two balls and completely eliminated Jharkhand from the match. Bhuvneshwar gave only six runs while making one maiden in four overs and took three wickets including a hat-trick.
This victory was very important for UP to reach the next round. Apart from Jharkhand and UP in Group C, Jammu and Kashmir team now has a chance to reach 20 points. If the UP team had not won this match, it would have been out of the race for the knockout, but now the matter will come down to net run rate.
Recently, in the IPL 2025 auction, Bhuvneshwar Kumar was bought by Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) for Rs 10.75 crore. Earlier, Bhuvneshwar played for Sunrisers Hyderabad from 2014 to 2024.
–IANS
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