CHENNAI: Riding on Tushar Raheja’s excellent century (102) and an unbeaten 73 by Pradosh Ranjan Paul, Tiruppur Tamizhans comprehensively beat Chepauk Super Gillies by seven wickets in the Tamil Nadu Premier League tie in Dindigul on Friday. In the second match, Nellai Royal Kings beat Dindigul by six wickets chasing the 171-run target set by the home team.
Earlier, Raheja and Pradosh steadied the ship, in the chase of 206 run-target for Tiruppur. The duo handled Chepauk medim-pacers Abhishek Tanwar and Vignesh M deftly and were harsh upon spinners Ashwanth Valthapa and Silambarasan R.
Raheja, who was awarded the Player of the match, was happy to contribute to his team’s victory.
“I’m happy to have got a hundred. Our plan was to not lose too many wickets in the powerplay. Once I got a feel of the wicket which was good to bat, I decided to play positively and bat till the very end,” Tushar told this daily from Dindigul. He also complimented Pradosh’s efforts with the bat. “He was rock solid at the other end. As long as he was batting, we knew we were on course for a victory,” he added.
Put in to bat, Chepauk lost their opener Waseem Ahmed early as he was castled by a quicker one from pacer T Natarajan.
Then skipper N Jagadeesan and Aashiq Kaleel Rehman stitched a stand worth 57-runs. Jagadeesan fell to the guile of Mohan Prasanth. Aashiq stood rock solid and completed his third fifty in TNPL. However, Sai Kishore provided a timely breakthrough by dismissing Swapnil Singh. This put Chepauk in a spit of bother at 129 for 5.
Aashiq, who fell two runs short of his ton, knew that the team needed runs and upped the gears. Ashwanth Valthapa (28 n.o) too made a useful contribution. Reflecting on the loss, Vignesh said: "Despite posting 205 runs, we couldn't defend the total as the opposition executed their plans well. The support from the captain and coaching staff gave me the confidence to bowl well and I'm happy to have contributed with three wickets. We'll learn from this and come back stronger in the next game."
Brief scores: Chepauk 205/8 in 20 ovs (Aashiq KR 98) lost to Tiruppur 206/3 in 18 ovs (T Raheja 102, P Ranjan Paul 73 n.o; Vignesh M 3/31); Dindigul 170/7 in 20 ovs (Vimal Khumar 63; Sonu Yadav 3/24) lost to Nellai 172/4 in 17.4 ovs (U Mukilesh 43 n.o; P Bhuvaneswaran 2/31).
