Monday, February 16, 2009

Rashtriya Sahara, Hindustan in final




Patna, February 11, 2009
You just can’t expect more. The quality of cricket and total devotion shown by the four semi-finalist teams on the field for the top two slots of the 4th Airtel Media Cup Twnety20 cricket tournament at the Moinul Haq Stadium here on Wednesday gave ample example why T20 format of the cricket is most popular and even the mediamen, who played the game for fun felt the heat. The results came out at the end of 20th over showed the intensity of battle fought between the tow teams.

Defending champions Rashtriya Sahara, who are considered to be title favourites, survived some anxious moment before prevailing over dark-horse Hindustan Times Media Limited by 14 runs. In the second semi-final of the day two leading Hindi dailies of Patna, Hindustan and Dainik Jagran fought even more fierce battle. Finally, Hindustan held a bit edge defeating Dainik Jagran by a narrow margin of 3 runs and set up title clash with Rashtirya Sahara.


Batting first Rashtriya Sahara made a challenging 133 for the loss of five wickets off 20 overs. Abhay Pathak was the hero of Sahara innings slamming 76 runs. He was later adjudged man of the match for his stupendous knock.


In reply, Hindustan Times Media Limited could manage to score 119 for the loss of five wickets off 20 overs. Slow batting in the initial overs proved costly for HT Media as despite Sourav’s gallant 63 runs and Prashant’s 33 they failed to achieve the target. Vinrendra Singh claimed two wickets for 31 runs.

In the second match, Hindustan scored 129 runs losing all the wickets off 20 overs while Dainik Jagran fell short by three runs in reply.


Brief scores:
Rashtriya Sahara:
133 for 5 in 20 overs (Abhaya Pathak 76, Rajeev Ranjan 13, Rakesh Chauhan 11, Laxmi 1/21, Rajesh 1/36).
HT Media: 119 for 5 in 20 overs (Prashant 33, Sourav 63, Neeraj Sinha 14, Birendra Singh 2/31, Nitosh Jha 1/14).
Hindustan: 129 all out in 20 overs (Dilip Mishra 22, Abhishek 29, Arun Pratap 29, Ramesh 2/18, Yogesh Mishra 3/22).
Dainik Jagran: 126 for 8 in 20 overs (Yogesh 32, Amrendra 25, Jaya Prakash 3/23, Vijay 1/23).
Photo caption: Hindustan team celebrates victory over Dainik Jagran. Bottom: Rashtriya Sahara and HT Media Ltd teams pose for group photograph after their semi-final clash in Patna on Wednesday (Feb 11, 2009).
Photo: Aftab Alam Siddiqui

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