SUBHASH MISHRA
Dhanbad, May 31: Title favourite Jamshedpur will clash with Deoghar in the final match of the Jharkhand under-19 cricket championship.
In the semifinal, Jamshedpur beat Ranchi by two wickets while in the second semifinal Deoghar trounced host Bokaro by five wickets to ensure a berth in the final of the championship.
The match between Jamshedpur and Ranchi was played at Digwadih Stadium of Tata Steel Jharia division of Dhanbad. It witnessed an exciting encounter. While batting first, Ranchi with help of two half-centuries by Nakul Kumar (unbeaten 57) and Uttam Kumar (54) scored 203 in the stipulated 50 overs.
Besides Nakul and Uttam, Prince Singh chipped in 35 runs and Rishikesh contributed 18 runs to push the team’s score to 203 runs.
Rishu Singh Chouhan of Jamshedpur was the wrecker in chief of the Ranchi team who claimed four wickets for 40 runs while Ankit Kumar took three wickets for 48 runs and Arpit Yadav took two wickets conceding 30 runs.
After facing many ups and downs, finally, Jamshedpur won by two wickets in the last of the match. Jagdeep Singh was the top scorer of the team with a superb half-century (73). He was declared the man of the match. Durgesh and Tushar Arora helped to seal the final berth for the team in the championship.
Deoghar vs Bokaro
Roshan Kumar and Rohit Kumar of Ranchi took four and three wickets conceding 23 and 39 runs respectively.
In the second semifinal played at SAIL Stadium Bokaro, the Deoghar team first restricted host Bokaro to 145 runs in 42.3 overs and later scored the required run for victory (146) in 30 overs losing five wickets in the process.
Shivam Tyagi of Deoghar hit a superb unbeaten half-century (58) while Abhay Kumar Singh and Hardik Panjwani contributed 30 and 18 runs respectively for Deoghar.
For the Bokaro team, Shubham Kumar scored the highest 42 while Sachin Yadav (26), Himanshu Kumar (25) and Mukesh Kumar (23) contributed.
Aniket and Abhay Kumar Singh took three wickets each for Deoghar conceding 9 and 28 runs respectively.
