BLB vs MD 18th Match, Maharaja T20 2023

9:08 PM IST: Well that’s that and it’s the Mangalore Dragons who have secured a comfortable win by 31 runs against the Bengaluru Blasters as they still look for their first win of the tournament. 

Batting first, the Dragons scored a first innings total of 171-7 from the 20 overs of play. The opening pair of Krishnamurthy Siddharth 23 (21) and Rohan Patil 28 (23) accumulated a decent 39 run stand to start off proceedings. 

Patil then strung a 36 run partnership alongside Sharath BR 21 (13). Sharath did impress with his two sixes and one four while batting at a strike rate of 161.54  but was unable to take the momentum forward as Shubhang Hegde bagged his wicket. 

Sarfaraz Ashraf impressed a great deal with his left arm wrist spin as he scalped two wickets for just 21 runs from his four over spell. Ashraf got the better of Rohan Patil and Gaurav Dhiman 11 (11) in quick succession to shift the momentum in his team’s favour. 

With the scorecard reading 89-4 from 12 overs it was then Aniruddha Joshi 39 (26) and Aneeshwar Gautam 32 (24) who compiled 71 runs in quick fashion to assist the Dragons to a good enough target. 

Talking about the run chase, it was a sorry state of affairs for the Bengaluru Blasters. First it was Anand Doddamani who chimed in with back to back wickets after sending Dega Nischal 9 (9) and Jeswant Acharya 0 (1) back into the hut.

Pavan Deshpande 4 (7) didn’t have much to offer either as Krishnappa Gowtham got the better of him. The Blasters skipper Mayank Agarwal did show a bit of flair with his knock of 23 (13) that consisted of three fours and a six. However, it was then the Paras Arya show as he bagged two wickets in one over to dismiss both Agarwal and Suraj Ahuja 5 (3). 

Arya didn’t stop there as he wrecked further havoc by dismissing Aashish Mahesh 11 (8), Rishi Bopanna 0 (2) as well as LR Kumar 0 (1). Paras Arya did the unthinkable by bagging a fifer from just 12 balls.

The Blasters were facing humiliation with the scorecard being at 57-8 from eight overs. It seemed like the game could get over in a jiffy but that’s when Shubhang Hegde and Sarfaraz Ashraf 23 (29)  displayed grit and character to get their side to a respectable sense of defeat. 

The duo contributed to a 57 run stand before Ashraf was dismissed by Aditya Goyal. That said, Hegde made sure to stay there till the very end and be the perfect example as to how his team could have got a positive result out of this had their batters applied themselves on the wicket and didn’t throw their wickets away in the process. The Blasters eventually went on to score 140-9 from 20 overs. 

With all that being said and done, it was certainly the day of the impact player who made a serious impact in the game with his spin and spectacular spell of 5-22 from four overs.