Sedate batting by Bengal openers led to their third defeat as hosts Vidarbha kept their quarter-final hopes alive with a four wicket win a group A league encounter of the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament, here on Thursday.
While Vidarbha with 12 points from 4 games still have two games left, Bengal with only 8 points from five games with a match left against Haryana are almost out of contention unless something miraculous happens and results fall in place.
Batting first, Bengal managed an unimpressive 147 for five in 20 overs largely due to the slow batting from opener Abhishek Das, who struggled to reach 56 consuming 52 deliveries in the process.
Das and other opener Sayan Sekhar Mondal (52 off 38 balls) added 98 for the opening wicket but it took them 13 overs in reaching that score. The pressure that they put on the remaining batsmen showed as Bengal managed only 49 runs in the next seven overs losing five wickets in the process.
In reply, skipper Faiz Fazal (49) and Apoorv Wankhede (37) were the architects of the Vidarbha victory as they achieved the target with four balls to spare. Skipper Ashok Dinda, who was brilliant against HP leaked runs giving away 33 in 3.2 overs.
Brief Scores
Bengal: 147/5 (Abhishek Das 56, Sayan Sekhar Mondal 52, Akshay Karnewar 2/26) lose to Vidarbha: 151/6 (Faiz Fazal 49, Apoorv Wankhede 37).
Andhra beat Assam
Vadodara: Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad's all-rpund show went in vain as Assam dished out a pathetic batting display to slump to a 12-run loss, their third out of four matches, against Andhra in a low-scoring Group C tie of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Twenty20 cricket tournament.
Electing to bowl, Assam produced a disciplined bowling and fielding show to restrict Andhra to a modest 117 for eight.
Syed Mohammad picked up three wickets for just 15 runs with his left-arm spin, while Abu Nechim Ahmed (2/14) accounted for two scalps. It was a modest chase for Assam but the top-order faltered to leave them in a spot of bother at 53 for six.
left-arm pacer Cheepurapalli Stephen (4/14) picked up four wickets for Andhra while Sirla Srinivas (2/13), Bodavarapu Sudhakar (2/22) and Bandaru Ayyappa (2/25) shared the rest six Assam wickets between them.
Brief Scores
Andhra: 117/8 (AG Pradeep 26; Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad 3/15) beat Assam: 105 all out in 19.3 overs (Jamaluddin Syed Mohammad 42; Cheepurapalli Stephen 4/14) by 12 runs.