Press Trust of India
Bangalore, March 20: Riding high on Manish Pandey’s scintillating century (123 n o, 164b, 12×4, 3×6) and leg-spinner Shreyas Gopal’s sterling bowling effort (4/39), Karnataka retained the Irani Cup after beating Rest of India by 246 runs on the fourth day of the match, here Friday.
Karnataka became only the second team to bag back-to-back Irani Cup titles, Mumbai being the first. With this win, Karnataka rounded off the domestic season with a treble just as they did a year ago by retaining the Ranji Trophy and winning the Vijay Hazare Trophy earlier in the season.
Gopal and Abhimanyu Mithun (3/40) toyed with the RoI batting order and bowled them out for 156 in 43.3 overs while chasing a mammoth target of 403 runs at the Chinnaswamy stadium.
Man of the match Pandey won the laurels for his batting, but Gopal picked up the prized scalps of dangerous Kedar Jadhav (56, 48b, 6×4, 3×6), Jayant Yadav, Rishi Dhawan and Shardul Thakur to take the sting out of their opponents.
Mithun also bowled his heart out in both the innings, finishing with impressive figures of six for 86 in 27 overs. “All credit goes to the boys. Dedication and desire is the key to Karnataka’s success. Batting in the fourth innings was going to be difficult here because the cracks got wider. We had the bowling attack. We knew 300-plus runs would be difficult for them,” he said after the match Friday.
Resuming their second innings at 341 for six, Karnataka added another 81 runs before getting bowled out at 422. Pandey, who resumed at the overnight score of 73, made bulk of the runs by adding 50 runs, but other Karnataka batsmen failed to give him support from the other end and fell to a fiery spell of Shardul Thakur (5/86), who claimed all the remaining four wickets.
“I was a little lucky, but it finally paid off. A century in the Irani Trophy matters a lot. The season was very good. I did not convert starts early on but I am happy to finish it in this manner. A 400-plus target was a big lead for us. That made the difference,” Pandey told the media.
Rest of India struggled throughout their second innings as five batsmen failed to reach the double digits. Only Jadhav showed some fight with an attacking half century, but that wasn’t enough. “Karnataka bowlers bowled really well. We backed our boys to do well but we didn’t have luck. Full credit to them,” RoI captain Manoj Tiwary stated
