Meghalaya won their first match of the Vijay Hazare Trophy domestic men’s one day tournament in Jaipur today, beating Manipur by 33 runs.
This was also Meghalaya’s first senior team win this season and came on the back of several near-misses against bigger sides in previous games.
The toss went Meghalaya’s way and they made Manipur bat first, but the fellow North East side put up a good fight to post 248/9 in their 50 overs. The chase was going swimmingly well for Meghalaya, as they reached 171/3 in 34 overs, when weather got in the way of any more cricket. According to the VJD method (the local alternative to Duckworth-Lewis), Meghalaya were ahead of the required score at that stage by 33 runs.
Manipur made a tremendous start to their innings, with the only negative being that a few players got out after settling in. Johnson was the only one to get to a half-century, dismissed in the end for 58 off the bowling of Swarajeet Das. Two other batters were out in the 40s and another two in the 30s.
For Meghalaya, guest player Rajesh Bishnoi bowled his full complement of 10 overs and took 3/49 with his left-arm spin. Swarajeet bagged 2/38 in 8 overs and Md Nafees 2/52 in 10.
All five Meghalaya players who batted today got among the runs, with guest player Nakul Verma knocking a high of 49. He put on 56 with fellow opener Raj Biswa (24) and Swarajeet added a further 27 coming in at No. 3.
By the time the latter was dismissed, Meghalaya had reached 115/3 in 27.1 overs. This left them requiring around 5.80 an over to win and they were able to lift their run rate thanks to the unbeaten fourth wicket stand of 56 by Jaskirat Singh Sachdeva (23 not out from 19 deliveries) and guest Tanmay Mishra (37 not out from 26).
With them at the crease, Meghalaya were able to reach 171/3 in 34 overs, which was well ahead of the required VJD method score.
Meghalaya’s last match of the tournament will be against Hyderabad on Tuesday.
