AG Nagpur fumbled at the final hurdle as they lost the IA & AD West Zone T20 Cricket Tournament by seven wickets to AG Rajkot in Jaipur on Friday. Their challenging target of 207 runs was easily achieved by Rajkot who collected the required runs with a ball to spare. Invited to bat first on a flat track, Nagpur posted 206 from 20 overs losing six wickets. Nagpur had a poor start as they lost both the openers inside powerplay. Akshay Kolhar could score 13 runs while R Sanjay added 23. Aditya Sarvate and captain Akshay Wadkar hit a fifty each while Rajneesh Gurbani once again threw his bat to score valuable runs in the end. Promoted up the order, Sarvate hit 57 runs from 35 deliveries with a couple of boundaries and four sixes.

 

Wadkar maintained his fine run with the bat hitting an unbeaten 61 from 39 balls laced with eight balls to the fence. Gurbani then slammed a 15-ball 28 (3x4, 1x6) to take Nagpur’s total past 200-run mark. In reply, Rajkot were rattled by Abhijeet Piprode who sent back opener Sahil on the first ball. But captain Arpit Vasavada (80*; 48b, 9x4) and Divyarajsingh Chauhan 88*; 46b, 12x4, 2x6) took the game away from Nagpur. The duo remained undefeated adding 174 runs from 93 deliveries. Captain Wadkar emerged as the top run scorer from Nagpur with 193 runs followed by Kolhar who hit 163 runs. Gurbani was the most valuable player with seven wickets and 148 runs.