Bengal beat Tamil Nadu to make U-23 semifinals

KOLKATA: The Bengal Under-23 boys marched into the semifinals of the one-day meet beating Tamil Nadu by four wickets via the VJD method at Dehradun on Wednesday. They will play Chandigarh in the semifinal on Friday.
The Bengal bowlers were on target as they bowled the opposition out for a paltry 163 after asking them to bat first on winning the toss. Sandipan Das provided early breakthrough as he removed Vignesh Gunti and Lokeshwar Suresh in his first over to reduce TN to 3/2 in the second over of the match.
Akash Deep and Pradipta Pramanik then combined to grab seven wickets between them as TN failed to build up a partnership.
Rain interrupted the match for almost two hours during the innings break and Bengal were set to chase a revised target of 128 runs in 33 overs. Sudip Gharami (34), Ankur Paul (31) and Kazi Saifi (30) got the runs as Bengal won in 29.5 overs.
Coach Sourashis Lahiri was happy with the boys' show. "I always believed in consistency and these U-23 boys have been very consistent for the last three years. Many new faces made their way into the team and they have all been absolutely amazing. This is a very tough format but they have performed well," the former Bengal spinner said.
"Sandipan gave us the needed breakthrough bagging two wickets in his first over. The team was able to carry forward that momentum," he added.
Pacer Akash ended up with four wickets giving away just 33 runs. "The wicket was on the slower side. I just attacked the stumps," he later said.
The openers gave Bengal a good start with a 60-run partnership. The team suffered a minor collapse as they lost five wickets for 20 runs to be reduced to 110 for six. But Pradipta (10) and Karan Kaila (8) stayed till the end to book a last-four berth for Bengal.
Brief scores: TN U-23 163 in 49 overs (Ajith Ram 37; Akash Deep 4-33, Pradipta Pramanik 3-22, Sandipan Das 2-36), Bengal U-23 128/6 in 29.5 overs (Sudip Gharami 34, Ankur Paul 31, Kazi Saifi; R Raman 2-15). Bengal won by 4 wkts.