Nayudu trophy: UP and Rlys to clash in last pool league match

Kanpur: A keen tussle is on the cards when UP will clash with Railways in their last pool league match of under-25 cricket championship for Col C K Nayudu trophy in Ahmedabad on Sunday.Both the teams have qualified for the knockout but this clash will be for the pool champion title. At present Railways is leading with 26 points from five outings and UP have 23 points from the same number of ties. If UP achieves an outright win against the Railways in this match which is a very difficult affair then it will sit in number one place. If UP gets the first innings lead then the two teams will tie on points and in that case Railways will sit on number one place as they have 4 wins against UP’s 3 wins.The morale of all members of the team is high and they are eager to perform their best, said Mohd Amir, coach of the UP team. Talking to TOI in a telephonic conversation, he said that all key batsmen such as Captain Sameer Rizvi Siddharth, Aditya Sharma are in form and their bats are producing runs.Sameer had missed his first three hundred in the listed tournament scoring 297 runs against Manipur in the last match. Besides, he had also scored 70 plus and a century in the previous matches. Siddharth and Aditya Sharma had also scored valuable runs for the team.Similarly, in bowling too Kritagya KK Singh and Purnank Tyagi are key bowlers of UP as they were the highest wicket takers for their team. Purnank had grabbed around 18 wickets so far while Kritagya was behind him. He had bagged 8 wickets in the last match.The coach said the Railways also had some talented players in its ranks and they were performing well in the current season. Yuvraj, Harsh Tyagi and Rajat had a very good record in the last five matches.Though he had not witnessed the wicket as teams were allowed to net at the outer ground but reputation was of good batting track. It means both teams would try to get a first innings lead. The team had focused on its weakness during the nets and tried to remove them, he said . “Our players will play as per their potential”, he added.The final XI will be picked after witnessing the market before the match, Amir said.