Panaji: Dempo Challengers and Prescon Panthers cruised to victory in their respective matches at the 3rd Panjim Gymkhana Members League T20 tournament at PG ground on Saturday.
Prescon moved into the second position in the points table after a dominant six-wicket victory over Priority Titans in their last league outing today. Dempo are currently third with their final league match coming up against leaders Manas Mavericks on Sunday morning. All three teams have eight points each in their kitty. The fourth team to make it to the knock-out stage is Desserts N’More Avengers, who finished with six points from six games.
RC Goa suffered a heavy 99-run defeat to Dempo Challengers today and finished fifth with six points and a negative NRR.
Electing to bat first, Dempo Challengers batters put in their best effort to raise a strong total of 165/8. Towering opener Vijay Shankar Nagarajan hammered 40 runs with the help of three boundaries and three sixers setting the tone for a resolute display by the Challengers, who had struggled to bat well in the previous matches. At the other end, Niraj Lotlekar contributed 35 runs mixing caution and aggression while hitting five boundaries. The openers put on a superb partnership of 55 runs. The dependable Dhilan Shah scored 36 runs and was involved in two important partnerships of 38 and 32 with Niraj and Shubham Lokre (24 not out) for the second and fifth wicket respectively. RC Goa skipper Harshad Gadekar picked two wickets while other bowlers couldn’t make an impression.
In reply, RC Goa failed to click as a batting unit with Purle Cap holder Shekhar Amonkar taking two wickets in the first over itself. He returned figures of 3\17 to take his tournament tally to 10 wickets. N Kambli (2/14), Harsh Parekh (2/06) and Dhilan (1/13) were the other wicket-takers, who collectively skittled out RC Goa for 66 runs in 13 overs. Dhilan Shah was named man of the match and was presented the award by Jairam Kholkar.
In the next match, Prescon Panthers chased down Priority Titans’ total of 124/6 with ease playing aggressively with an eye on the Net Run Rate. They reached 126/4 with four overs to spare.
Ketan Nandrekar (31 not out), Vivek Karapurkar (27 not out off 10 balls), Gourav Desai (26 off 12 balls) and Neel Netravalkar (22) delivered with the bat as Prescon outplayed Priority in their last league match of the PGML3.0.
Earlier put into bat, Priority Titans rode on skipper Mukhtar Kadri’s 40 runs (4×4, 6×2), Akshay Badami’s quickfire 25 off 10 balls and Vedant Naik’s contribution of 22 runs to post a modest total as Prescon Panthers kept the rival batters under check with Neel Netravalkar (3/13) being the pick of the bowlers. He was named man of the match and the award was presented to Neel by Arun Bhat.
