BENGALURU: It was a day to forget for defending champions Karnataka, who suffered a nine-wicket loss to Punjab in a Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Group A clash, in Alur on Tuesday.
Siddharth Kaul (4/26) starred with a hat-trick while opener Prabhsimran Singh thrashed Karnataka bowlers all around the park during a 52-ball unbeaten 89 in a game where Karun Nair and his men were outplayed in all departments.
With Punjab deciding to bowl first after winning the toss, Karnataka were always going to be strongly tested against a top-class bowling attack comprising Kaul, Sandeep Sharma, Arshdeep Singh and Mayank Markande.
The problem for Karnataka was the failure of their batsmen to string together a respectable partnership as they lost wickets at regular intervals. The 34-run fourth-wicket stand between Pavan Deshpande and Rohan Kadam proved to be their best.
Though some of the Karnataka players got off to decent starts, they failed to convert those into meaningful scores. Scores of 13 by Nair, Devdutt Padikkal (19), Deshpande (16) did not help when the senior pros, including KL Rahul, Manish Pandey and Mayank Agarwal, are missing from the squad.
Kadam top-scored with 33, but his dismissal at the 16.3-over mark triggered a collapse with Kaul completing his hat-trick by scalping Aniruddha Joshi and Abhimanyu Mithun in the next two balls. They just managed 125/8.
With the batsmen failing to put up a decent score on board, the onus fell on the Karnataka bowlers, who found it tough to contain Prabhsimran. The opener was in a hurry to finish the game and went about his job with ridiculous ease as Punjab raced to 60/0 in powerplay. They never looked back ever since as they reached the target with more than five overs to spare.
Prabhsimran, who scored 43 in the first match, was in scintillating form and his unbeaten innings comprised nine fours and five sixes.
The bowling figures made for a sorry picture, with Mithun and Ronit More going for more than 12 runs per over. Prasidh Krishna was the most economical, going under five runs per over. K Gowtham took the lone wicket for Karnataka, dismissing Abhishek Sharma. Karnataka next face Tripura on Thursday.