Group A
Four of Tushar Deshpande’s thirteen wickets for the season came in a match in which Mumbai bowled Puducherry out for 67 and easily pursued it down. In 5 overs, he amassed figures of 4/11, whereas Shams Mulani amassed 3/19. Dharmendrasinh Jadeja, the other low-scoring member of the group, took 5 for 16 against Odisha. Despite having been dismissed for 99 runs, Odisha forced Saurashtra to work hard to secure their victory, which was achieved with four wickets remaining.
Tripura was defeated by 119 runs, but Kerala’s fast-bowling duo of Akhin Sathar (3/27) and Akhil Scaria (3/11) rendered their team’s modest total of 231 appear monumental. Sikkim’s demise at Alur was due to their inability to counter left-arm spin, as Akash Pandey and Raj Choudhary of the Railways took six wickets and allowed only 43 runs to be scored in 19 overs.
Group B
Vidarbha captain Atharva Taide contributed to the chasedown of Jharkhand’s 111 in the fourteenth over with a 70 off 46 balls that included ten fours and one six. Siddharth Mhatre (87 off 74 balls) and Nikhil Naik (71* off 82 balls) contributed 136 runs for the fifth wicket in Jaipur, which was sufficient to buoy Maharashtra’s pursuit of Meghalaya.
In Chhattisgarh’s 88-run triumph over Manipur, Shashank Singh supported his mesmerizing 152 off 113 balls with figures of 5 for 20 in five overs, demonstrating an extraordinary all-around performance. Services, in pursuit of Hyderabad’s 210, rallied from 29/3 in 10.1 overs to claim victory by six wickets. Leading the way were Services captain Rajat Paliwal (77 off 101 balls) and Vineet Dhankhar (78 off 76 balls).
Group C
Devdutt Padikkal maintained his remarkable form by smashing a 93 off 57 balls against Bihar, which included nine fours and five sixes. In the first innings, he and Nikin Jose (69 off 73 balls) neutralized Sakibul Gani’s century as Karnataka earned their fourth consecutive victory. Haryana’s resounding victory was completed with runs scored by Himanshu Rana (136 off 132) and Rahul Tewatia (80 off 42), before Harshal Patel (5 for 24) thwarted Mizoram’s pursuit.
Shubham Khajuria, the captain of Jammu & Kashmir, hit a century, and his spinners contributed to the team’s victory over Delhi with their solid performances. For a decisive 75-run victory, Abid Mushtaq took three balls while Rasikh Salam collected four. Chattisgarh scored 305 for 8 in a high-scoring match in Ahmedabad, where all four of their leading batters struck fifty-pluses. In a similar fashion, four of Uttarakhand’s top-five bowlers achieved such scores in order to seize the enormous target.
Group D
In a contest predominantly dominated by bowlers, Abhijeet Tomar’s 124 runs off 115 balls was decisive in securing a 38-run triumph for Rajasthan over Andhra. Rishi Dhawan and Mayank Dagar each took four wickets in the 121-run dismissal of Assam by Himachal Pradesh. In response, Sumeet Verma amassed an unbeaten 51 off 20 deliveries with the assistance of four sixes and six fours, securing the eight-wicket victory.
In the 38th over, Gujarat chased down UP’s 233/8. Urvil Patel added 86 runs off 83 balls after scoring 100 off 41 balls, and Kshitij Patel scored an unbeaten 83.
Group E
Sanvir Singh (74 off 91) and Ramandeep Singh (80 off 50) revived a wobbly start with the bat for Punjab before the bowlers chipped in, in unison to power their 67-run win over Goa in Mumbai.
Tamil Nadu recovered from 52 for 6, through Dinesh Karthik’s 51-ball 68 and Shahrukh Khan’s 31 off 39 to post 162. Then the trio of T Natarajan, Varun Chakravarthy and R Sai Kishore ran through Baroda’s line-up to bundle them out for 124 in the 24th over. Madhya Pradesh’s Kumar Kartikeya picked four wickets but Abhimanyu Easwaran hit 73 to push Bengal to 254/8. As it turned out, it was far more than what they needed on the day as MP folded for 61. Left-arm spinner Shahbaz Ahmed finished with exceptional figures of 3.4-1-7-4 and Akash Deep got 6-0-8-3.
