BENGALURU: After an impressive outing in the Indian Premier League, Devdutt Padikkal has grown in confidence as was shown in Karnataka's match against Tripura in Alur on Thursday. Though the Southpaw missed his triple-figure score by a single run, his innings played an important role in Karnataka's ten-run victory.
Karnataka scored 167/5 in the first innings, and Tripura came close with the brilliance of MB Mura Singh, who scored 33-ball 61, but it did not prove to be enough.
Padikkal and Rohan Kadam gave their team a good start with an opening stand of 62 runs, but rest of the batsmen did not show much support to the former as Karnataka lost wickets at regular intervals. The likes of Karun Nair, KL Shrijith and Aniruddha Joshi did not make good contributions to the team total.
Besides Padikkal's 99, rest of the players only managed 64 runs with the bat. In fact, the failure of their batsmen has been a point of concern this season so far.
However, Karnataka were in the driving seat with their bowlers delivering the goods in the first half of the second innings. After Abhimanyu Mithun scalped AA Sinha in the first over, Tripura were tottering at 68/4 and one thought it would be a cakewalk for Nair and his men. But, an unbeaten 89-run partnership between Mura and RA Dey threatened to rob Karnataka of two points. The two combined for nine sixes. Despite their valiant efforts, they fell short at the end.
Third straight win for TN
Tamil Nadu continued their impressive run in the competition with a third successive win as they beat Odisha by eight wickets in Kolkata. Murugan Ashwin scalped three wickets to contain Odisha to 132/9 and a quickfire 38-ball 61 from Narayan Jagadeesan ensured Tamil Nadu reached the target in the 16th over.