NCA emerge champs

Academy side wins by virtue of first innings lead

National Cricket Academy, as expected, emerged champions in the KSCA all-India invitational Dr K Thimmappaiah memorial cricket tournament here at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium on Friday. 

NCA did little wrong on what turned out to be a largely academical final day against Haryana CA to walk the victors by virtue of their first innings lead of 379 runs. 

Needing a miracle for an outright win and to take the trophy, Haryana CA once again lacked belief and inspiration as NCA, overnight 20/3, batted their way to 223/8 from 54.2 overs before declaring. Haryana needed 603 runs in less than two sessions and that was never going to be attainable target. 

They closed their innings at 142/4 from 20 overs before the match was called off.Rahul Dalal (64, 44b, 13x4)) and Joginder Sharma (58, 49b, 7x4, 3x6), promoted up the order to one-drop, used the long handle effectively but the damage was already done in the first innings when they lost half the side for less than a hundred on the board.  Earlier on Friday, NCA swelled their already huge lead on the back of useful contributions from Kuldeep Yadav (26), Deepak Hooda (28) and Sudeep Chatterjee (32). 

It was always going to be a huge task for Haryana once NCA run up that huge first innings score of 656 and they went down without putting up as much as a fight.  



Brief scores: NCA: 656 all out and 223/8 decl in 54.2 overs (Kuldeep Yadav 26, Deepak Hooda 28, Sudeep Chatterjee 32; Sonu Rathee 2-23, Jayant Yadav 2-47) drew Haryana CA: 277 all out and 142/4 in 20 overs (Rahul Dalal 64, Joginder Sharma 58; Kuldeep Yadav 2-25).