Bengal beat Punjab to qualify for the knock outs of Vijay Hazare Trophy 2023

Bengal beat Punjab by 52 runs in their Vijay Hazare Trophy 2023 clash on Tuesday at the Dadoji Konddev Stadium in Thane and topped the Group E table with 20 points.

Batting first, Bengal piled up a challenging score of 242/9 in 50 overs. At one stage, they were struggling at 85/6 but a solid 145-run partnership between Karan Lal (66 runs off 63 balls) and Anustup Majumdar bailed them out. The duo absorbed the pressure like a sponge and played intelligent cricket, hitting the loose deliveries for boundaries and rotating the strike regularly. Majumdar scored his first century in this edition of the tournament as he carved his way to a delightful 111 off 116 balls. Punjab’s bowling rested on the able shoulders of right arm speedster Baltej Singh, who had picked four wickets in his last outing in Thane against Baroda, and again became the best bowler for his team with 35/5 in 10 overs, including two maidens, against Bengal.

Punjab, having lost their previous match at the same ground, were ready for a fight. However, Bengal bowlers came hard and them and bowled them out for 190 in 24.1 overs. The left arm spin twins in Shahbaz Ahmed and Kaushik Maity snapped six wickets between them to break the back of Punjab’s batting. Punjab’s opening batter Prabhsimran Singh (31 runs off 18 balls) provided a perfect start to the run chase but perished in the sixth over.  Captain Mandeep Singh (27 runs off 31 balls) and Sanvir Singh (35 runs off 24 balls) too showed good intent but fell against the run of play. In the end, Siddharth Kaul () entertained the crowd with a couple of sixes and a four in his knock of 17-ball 23.

With this match, Dadoji Konddev Stadium has completed its quota of hosting the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2023 matches. Interestingly, all the seven matches were won by the team batting first. The highest total scored here was 383 by Goa against Nagaland and the lowest was 61 by Madhya Pradesh against Bengal.

After all the matches, Thanevaibhav spoke with players and all were happy with the conditions and the pitch. They enjoyed playing in Thane and wished to play here in the future too.