Despite a disappointing show from their batsmen in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy group stages, Karnataka had luckily made it to the knockout stages. Hence, all eyes were on their batting unit when they came up against a quality pace attack of Punjab in the quarterfinals at the Sardar Patel Stadium on Tuesday. Karun Nair and his men did not show any signs of improvement as they were dismissed for 87. Punjab reached the target with ease in the 13th over to win the contest by nine wickets and reach the semifinals, leading to the exit of the defending champions.
In fact, when one expected Karnataka batsmen to up their game in such a crucial encounter, the opposite happened. They came up with their lowest score in the tournament this season. Even in their group game against Punjab, they were slightly better, scoring 125/8.
On Tuesday, Nair and Devdutt Paddikkal had started on a decent note. The openers scored at a good rate in the first couple of overs. But, Karnataka batsmen fell like a pack of cards after the skipper went back to the pavilion for 12 in the third over. They lost the wickets of Padikkal, Pavan Deshpande and BR Sharath in quick succession. The pace trio of Siddharth Kaul (3/15), Arshdeep Singh (2/16) and Sandeep Sharma (2/17) scalped two, one and one wicket respectively to push Karnataka back, early on.
After going from 24/0 to 26/4, there is very little that the middle and the lower order could do when the main batsmen failed to do their job. However, Aniruddha Joshi did try his level best, but no one hung around much to make a positive impact. His partnership with Shreyas Gopal was the best of the innings at 25 runs while J Suchith also stuck around, but after Joshi's wicket, they bundled out in no time.
If Karnataka had any hopes of defending 87 runs, they needed a magical performance from their bowlers. More importantly, they needed early breakthroughs and Abhimanyu Mithun delivered, dismissing opener Abhishek Sharma in the first over, which gave hope, but it did not last long.
Prabhsimran Singh (49 n.o) and Mandeep Singh (35) looked in complete control during the chase as the duo dealt in boundaries to secure their sixth straight win of the competition.