Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Jan 11: After matching skills with the players of formidable Punjab team and even dominating most of the sessions during the last three days, the cohesive unit of Jammu and Kashmir brave hearts led by promising all-rounder Parvez Rasool went down fighting to be ousted in the quarterfinals, courtesy-a splendid spell of fast bowling by Punjab speedster VRV Singh at Vadodara in Gujarat today.
Earlier, resuming from an overnight score of 77/2, J&K lost their third wicket in the form of Ian Dev Singh at his individual score of 18 and the team’s total of 80 runs. He was dismissed by Manpreet Gony.
The early dismissal of Singh, forced the skipper to promote Ramdayal in the batting order, who along with overnight batsman Hardeep Singh took the score to 128, before his stumps were uprooted by the paceman Sandeep Sharma.
The it was VRV Singh all the way, who plotted collapse of the Jammu and Kashmir team by dismissing skipper Rasool (10), wicketkeeper Obaid Haroon (0), Majid Dar (10) and Samiullah Beigh (2) to take his 5-wicket haul including that of Adil Reshi (yesterday) in the space of 14 runs.
In the meantime, Hardeep Singh was injured and got retired hurt. He, however, came back to the crease but VRV Singh continued his dismantling job by dismissing Beigh when he had him caught by Inder Singh in the 47th over to reduce J&K to 149 for eight.
M G Gujree and Hardeep then added another 53 runs before the former was sent back in the 59th over as J&K slumped to 202 for nine.
Umar Nazir Mir was the last to be dismissed in the 63.2 over as Punjab cemented their place in semifinals.
Their ouster in the quarterfinal stage notwithstanding, J&K created quite a stir this Ranji season by making the quarterfinals.
One of the stars for the team has been off-spinning all-rounder Rasool, the first cricketer from the State to be picked in an Indian team to play against an international side. Rasool proved himself in this match as well by getting a hundred and a 5-wicket haul.
“J&K inexperience shows up finally-but they R getting used 2 winning idea!Hopefully w/ improved infra-structure Valley lads cn do better!!” tweeted former J&K coach and ex-India skipper Bishan Singh Bedi after the team’s quarterfinal loss.
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