Excelsior Sports Correspondent
JAMMU, Oct 29: Jammu and Kashmir outplayed Chhattisgarh by virtue of the first innings lead to seal berth in the historic finals of Balram Tandon Memorial Cricket Tournament at Chandigarh today.
Batting first, Chhattisgarh scored a decent total of 205 runs in the first innings. Aryavart Singh top scored with 54 runs, while Nitant Singh and Shahir contributed 43 and 29 runs to the total respectively.
For J&K, Saksham, Irfan Ashraf and Manitvya bagged 2 wickets each, while Arun Kumar and Jeevesh Gupta claimed one wicket each. J&K in reply scored 264/7 in 90 overs, thus emerged winner by virtue of first innings lead. Shourya Chouhan top scored with 94 runs, studded with 10 fours and 2 sixes, while Rahil, Zaid Mufti and Manitvya contributed 47, 36 and 26 runs to the total respectively. Shubh Singh and Mohd Faiz took 2 wickets each for Chhattisgarh. It is pertinent to mention here that this is for the first time that J&K has qualified for the finals of this prestigious tournament. The J&K team is being accompanied by Zahoor Sofi as Manager, Sameer Khajuria as Head Coach, Muzaffar Mattoo as Coach, Amit Bargotra as Strength & Conditioning Coach and Dr Amir Malik as Team Physio.