Ranji Trophy: Uttar Pradesh beat Karnataka by 5 wickets, enter semifinals

Bengaluru, June 8: Karnataka crashed out of the Ranji Trophy on Wednesday (June 8) as Uttar Pradesh beat the 8-time champions by 5 wickets at the Alur Ground.

Chasing a challenging 213 to win and to seal a place in the Ranji Trophy semifinals, UP dished out their most solid batting effort on Day 3 to romp home.

Karnataka bowlers made an attempt to make a match of it, reducing the visitors to 114 for 5 despite Priyam Garg’s 60-ball 52. Pacer Vysakh Vijaykumar did the bulk of the damage, taking three wickets.

At that juncture, UP still needed 99 runs to win with 5 wickets in hand but they found a hero in skipper Karan Sharma, who belied his relatively tender age of 23 to play a mature innings of 93 off 163 balls.

The innings eventually prevented Karnataka from taking a longer look at UP’s late order and the Lucknow Super Giants batsman found an able ally in Prince Yadav.

Prince made a solid unbeaten 33 off 73 balls as Uttar Pradesh slowly but decisively inched towards the target.

But a bit of credit should also go for the Uttar Pradesh bowlers who restricted Karnataka to 114 in their second innings, and limit the target to achievable space.

Karnataka started the morning session at 100 for 8 and the UP bowlers wasted little time in taking the remaining two home side wickets while giving away just 14 runs.

Left-arm spinner Saurabh Kumar was the pick of the bowlers taking 3 wickets while pacers Ankit Rajpoot and Yash Dayal, the Gujarat Titans’ left-arm pacer, plucked two wickets apiece to keep the pressure on Karnataka.

This will be a very satisfying win for the UP outfit because they were firmly on the Blackfoot after Day 2. After bowling out Karnataka for 253 in their first innings, UP were themselves bundled out for 155 to concede an innings lead of 98 runs.

It was a substantial lead to concede but UP showed enough pluck to hang in there and hustle for victory in the end.