Sahara, ONGC register 2nd wins

Lucknow, May 3 (UNI) Hosts Sahara India and Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) registered their second successive wins of the Sahara City Homes Sheesh Mahal Cricket tournament here today.

At the Chowk stadium, Colombo Colts Sri Lanka faced their second successive defeat when they were beaten by ONGC by 7 wickets while playing at the K D Singh Babu stadium Sahara India team was declared winners on virtue of better run rate over ITC, Delhi by 27 runs due to rains after 37th over of ITC innings.

At the chowk stadium, former India wicket keeper Ajay Ratra (44*) in company with Ranji star Rizwan Shamshad (53*) saw ONGC past the Colombo's total of 167 in 24th over.

Earlier, batting first Colombo Colts started well, their opening wicket partnership between Kusal Perera (48) and Nilakshn Abeyrathne (66) gave solid start with a century stand of 109 runs in the 18th over, once they were separated the other preceeding batsmen failed miserably and the last 8 wickets added only 33 runs to their innings.

Rahul Sanghvi (3/27), Sumit (2/24) and Sarandeep (2/32) did major dent to Colombo innings. ONGC won the tie by 7 wickets.

At the K D Singh Babu stadium, the tie was decided on better run rate formula in which Sahara India was declared winners by 27 runs against ITC, Delhi.

With the help of fine 85 runs by Man of the Match Subhomoy Das, Sahara India scored 219 runs in stipulaed 40 overs, while Yusuf Pathan who scored the first century of the tournament on the opening day could not last long and was the victim of Abid Khan. He added only 11 runs to teams total of 219. The other major contributor was Abhishek Jhunjhunwala (48).

In reply, the ITC batsmen remained in their shell in front of the accurate bowling of rival Sahara's initial overs, although Deepak Sharma (62) tried his best to increase the run rate but at the other end wickets were tumbling at regular intervals.

Moreover, weather added more troubles for them when after the 37th over it was rained heavily and match was stopped.

The umpires declared that the ground was not playable any more, at this stage run rate formula was applied in which hosts were declared winners by 27 runs, at that stage the ITC were 175/8.

UNI