Meghalaya defeated Mizoram by four wickets on the fourth and final day of their Col CK Nayudu plate group match in Cuttack today.
With two wins, one draw and one defeat, Meghalaya concluded their campaign and bagged third place in the group, tied with second-placed Nagaland on 13 points each but slightly behind on quotient (also known as runs per wicket ratio).
Meghalaya were set a second innings target of 83 to win but had a nervy start to the chase, losing four wickets for only 11 runs before Abhishek Gupta and Roberth Sangma wielded the willow a little more aggressively to get the team out of a tight spot.
Earlier, Mizoram resumed on 170/8 and managed to score another 61 runs to finish on 231 all out. Their ninth wicket partnership alone added 96 runs to the cause, without which Meghalaya would have won by an innings. Abhishek Kumar took both wickets to fall today to finish with figures of 3/27.
With Meghalaya’s first innings score of 375 and Mizoram’s first of 226, the former were set a target of 83.
It looked like Mizoram might be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat after they removed four Meghalaya batters cheaply but Gupta and Roberth stitched a 45-run partnership together to almost take the team to victory before Gupta was stumped for 25.
Anxiety again returned as Roberth was run out for 23, leaving Meghalaya 25 to get with four wickets remaining.
It was left to bowlers Bipin Kumar Ray and Agreas Chamcham Sangma to negotiate their way through to victory and they accomplished the task with three fours and a six between them to take Meghalaya to 85/6.
