Himachal romp home to Plate title
Himachal Pradesh cruised to the Plate Group title by trouncing Orissa by nine wickets at Cuttack.
Cricinfo staff
01-Feb-2007
Himachal Pradesh cruised to the Plate Group title by trouncing Orissa by nine wickets at Cuttack. Set a miniscule 57 to win, HP rattled it off in 9.4 overs to romp home to a comprehensive win.
Halhadar Das fell after reaching his fifty and Orissa were shot out after adding 14 runs to their overnight score. Vikramjeet Malik, who was promoted to open, hit a brisk 19-ball 30 with four fours and a six and hastened the inevitable.
Sritam Das, Orissa's coach, blamed the batting in the first innings and the fielding during HP's massive reply. "It was the batting," Das told Cricinfo. "We won the toss and it was atleast a 450 wicket. The batsmen threw the wickets away."
But Orissa still had HP reeling at 161 for 5 and then at 200 for 6 when Ajay Mannu and Mukesh Sharma stitched together 114 runs to lift them out of trouble. The tail too wagged valiantly with Sarandeep Singh and Ashok Thakur adding 114 runs as HP ran away with the game. Orissa dropped a few catches and that hurt them. "The bowlers bowled well but from 161 for 5 we allowed to them get away. We dropped some vital catches, it was our worst fielding display of the season and they capitalised.
"In the second innings, we went for quick runs, but we ended up gifting the wickets away.
We reserved the worst for the final."
