Dinesh Karthik ton powers TN to Deodhar triumph

Vizag: Experienced stumper Dinesh Karthik slammed a 91-ball 126 to power Tamil Nadu to title triumph in the Deodhar Trophy with a comfortable 42-run win over India B in the final here on Wednesday. Thus, TN became the first state to win the three-team one-day tournament.

Batting first after winning the toss, Tamil Nadu notched up 303 in the allotted 50 overs, and then bowled out India B for 261 in 46.1 overs at the  Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy ACA-VDCA Cricket Stadium.

Tamil Nadu were at one stage struggling at 39/3 in the 11th over, before Karthik steadied the innings with a 136-run partnership for the fourth wicket with Narayan Jagadeesan (55).

The out-of-favour India keeper struck 14 boundaries and three sixes during his stay in the middle, while Jagadeesan found the fence four times and cleared it once.

Karthik then added 66 useful runs for the fifth wicket with skipper Vijay Shankar (21), before getting dismissed in the last ball of the 39th over.

Baba Indrajith contributed 31 off 30 balls as Tamil Nadu crossed 300.

Mumbai seamer Dhawal Kulkarni was the best bowler for India B, returning impressive figures of 5/39 in 10 overs.

In reply, India B lost Parthiv Patel early but Shikhar Dhawan and Manish Pandey added 64 runs for the second wicket to keep their team in the hunt.

Both the batsmen fell after getting starts. Dhawan made a quickfire 45 off 34 balls with the help of right boundaries and a six, while Pandey struck a brisk 32 off 24 balls.

Punjab’s Gurkeerat Singh top-scored with a 64 off 85 balls, while Ishank Jaggi (36) and Akshay Karnewar (29) made decent contributions down the order, but they were not enough to see the team batting second through.

Harpreet Singh made 36 off 51 balls, as Tamil Nadu succeeded in checking the flow of runs after the Dhawan-Pandey exploits. Among Tamil Nadu bowlers, Rahil Shaha picked up 3/40 while R Sai Kishore and M Mohammed bagged two wickets apiece.

Karthik was named the man of the match.