Rao, Pai do star turn

Bengaluru: Riding on Gagan Rao’s (89) batting effort, Mangalore Zone defeated Dharwad Zone by two wickets in the KSCA U-19 inter-mofussil cricket tournament here recently.Batting first, Dharwad were bundled out for 210. Barring Madhava Dharwadkar (89) and Manikanth Shivanand (51), other batters did not make much impact. Nischith Pai (3/46) and Ashish Nayak (2/40) were the main wicket-takers.

Mangalore batters were also tested by Dharwad with the game being decided in the final over. Rao’s 128-ball knock, laced with ten hits to the fence, played an important role in the win alongside Akshay A Kamath’s 108-ball 57. In another match, Shivamogga Zone registered a three-wicket win over Mysore Zone. After dismissing their rivals for 177, Shivamogga reached the target in the 43rd over for hte loss of seven wickets.Brief scores: Dharwad Zone: 210 all out in 50 overs (Madhava Dharwadkar 89, Manikanth Shivanand 51; Nischith Pai 3-46, Ashish Nayak 2-40) lost to Mangalore Zone: 211/8 in 49.4 overs (Gagan Rao 89), Akshay Kamath 57, Rohan RR 28n.o; Deepak Neeralagi 3-29, Dhruv Desai 2-32, Manikanth Shivanand 2-50).Mysore Zone: 177 all out in 41.1 overs (Karthik SU 63, Amogh H 26, Ishaan S 29; Santhosh S 2-35, Ajith MC 4-26, Shivaprasad S 3-25) lost to Shivamogga Zone: 178/7 in 42.3 overs (CR Kumarswamy 34, Amshu A 25, J Koushik 30, Tanmay M 34; Amogh H 3-30).Raichur Zone: 145 all out in 46.1 overs (Prabhu Sasalatti 31, Harsh P Jain 26, Siddhanth Navale 36; Vishwas V 2-19, Raiyan Malik 3-25, Ambresh K 2-37) lost to Tumkur Zone: 146/5 in 40.1 overs (Sohan V 51; Saideep HJ 38, Vivek Naik 2-30).