Dinesh Karthik displayed his class yet again and Shahrukh Khan put his head down to help Tamil Nadu register a hat-trick of wins in the Vijay Hazare Trophy Group E on Wednesday. Karthik’s quickfire 68 (51b, 9x4, 2x6) and his 75-run partnership for the seventh wicket with Shahrukh (31, 29b, 2x4, 1x6) bailed Tamil Nadu out of trouble at the Sharad Pawar Cricket Academy ground.
The in-form bowling quartet led by T. Natarajan then defended a total of 162 on a bowler-friendly track to bundle Baroda out for 124.
Had it not been for Karthik and Shahrukh’s association, TN would have found it difficult to get its bowlers into action. The side was staring down the barrel at 52 for six when the two batters got together.
Lukman Meriwala, the left-arm swinger, had run through the TN top-order. The seasoned campaigner exploited the conditions to perfection yet again to expose the frailties of TN batters in negotiating the movement and bounce.
In conditions slightly easing, despite the spinners also coming into the game, Karthik and Shahrukh rotated the strike for a while before Karthik targeted Bhargav Bhatt’s left-arm spin. The 31st over saw him tonk 23 runs, with the sequence reading 0, 6, 6, 4, 3, 4.
A sweep-shot over square leg fence meant Bhatt pulled the length back and Karthik was quick to dispatch the next ball over the midwicket fence.
The next ball was fuller and Karthik cleared the mid-on for a one-bounced four. The next one was steered through the vacant slip region for three followed by another sweep for a four.
Had Karthik not missed one from Ninad Rathwa — the other left-arm spinner with Baroda captain Krunal Pandya continuing to be sidelined due to a back spasm — in the next over, Tamil Nadu would have inched closer to 200.
Natarajan then rattled the Baroda top-order, with the chasing side reeling at 42 for four at the lunch break. Soon after the break, when Natarajan ran in from long-off to take an excellent catch to dismiss stand-in captain Vishnu Solanki, the writing was clear on the wall.
The spin duo of Varun Chakravarthy and R. Sai Kishore folded up the tail in no time. Had it not been for Bhatt’s three huge sixes, including two off Sai Kishore off successive balls before being dismissed, the victory margin would have been much bigger for Tamil Nadu.
