That's all from our coverage of the match between the Mangaluru Dragons and the Shivamogga Lions. The Lions kept their composure to secure their second win of the tournament and stay alive in the race for the semi-finals.
This is Ajay Pal Singh signing off on behalf of my co-commentator Saptak Sanyal, who along with our scorer/analyst Yogesh Kumar brought you all the live action from this fixture. There's plenty of action going around the cricketing world. So stay tuned.
Nihal Ullal (Shivamogga Lions Captain):"Definitely, the momentum is on our side. Everyone played well. He (S Shivaraj) is one man, you can imagine if both of them (Shivaraj and Abhinav Manohar) start batting together, lot of teams will be in trouble.
Yeah, it was missing (bowlers clicking in unison) in the first couple of games. The bowlers have done well. Kaushik has done well up front and then the spinners did their job."
Player of the Match: Abhinav Manohar
Trusted Player of the Match: Rohan Naveen
Super Sixes of the Match: Abhinav Manohar
Catch of the Match: Rohan Naveen
Orange Cap: Abhinav Manohar(347 runs)
Time for the post-match presentations.
22:38 IST and Local Time | Shivamogga Lions have registered a fine victory by finishing the game in style with a boundary. They have defeated Mangaluru Dragons by 3 wickets and 8 balls to go.
Batting first, Mangaluru Dragons were off to a very shoddy start as Macneil Noronha and Rohan Patil were slow and shaky to counter Vasuki Koushik. The game changed when Nikin Jose started to find the boundaries against Anand Doddamani. KV Siddharth(9) and Lankesh KS(3) got out cheaply putting their team in dire straits. Nikin however found a way to get a go as he registered a good partnership with his skipper Shreyas Gopal. Jose played a fine knock of 57 runs off 37 balls with 7 fours and a maximum. Shreyas Gopal scored 19 from 20 balls. Darshan MB and Lochan Gowda batted firmly in the slog overs. Gowda scored 19 off 8 and Darshan scored 18 from 12 to help their team to post 152/7 from 20 overs.
Vasuki Koushik, Anand Doddamani, HS Sharath, Avinash D, Ashok D and Hardik Raj- every bowler used by Nihal Ullal took one wicket each.
Coming to defend the run, Abhilash Shetty shook the Lions' openers. Nihal Ullal struggled to score a 14-ball 13 and Dheeraj Mohan scored 5 from 10 balls. Dheeraj Mohan and Abhinav Manohar batted sensibly after the openers got out. Mohan contributed 37 runs from 34 balls with 6 boundaries. Hardik Raj came to bat and he got off the mark with a boundary but in the very next ball, Advith Shetty knocked him over for just 4 runs.
But Abhinav Manohar kept the chase on. He played out Shreyas Gopal and when Advith Shetty came to bowl his final over, Manohar tonked him for a hat-trick of maximums to skyrocket the run rate. That over was the turning point of the run chase. Bharath Dhuri got out for 5 in the next over. Abhinav Manohar got out in the 17th over bowled by Darshan for 43 and that was a big moment in the game. He hit 5 maximums to decorate his innings. But Shivraj S came to bat next and he instantly hit a boundary and a maximum to take the chase going. Paras Arya bowled a fine 18th over and took the wicket of Ashok D. But Shivraj started the penultimate over with a maximum and in that over, the game was completed by Avinash D with a boundary. Shivraj remained unbeaten on 24 off 9 balls.
Advith Shetty and Paras Arya took 2 wickets each. Abhilash Shetty, Darshan MB and Shreyas Gopal took a wicket each but their efforts were not enough for Mangalore to get the victory.