Vijay Hazare Trophy: Another defeat puts Vidarbha out of the race for knockouts

NAGPUR: It turned out to be a tale of two hundreds by two openers. One by a seasoned opener, the other by an emerging star. While one was full of class, the other had lot of authority. One gave his team yet another perfect platform, while the other finished a job with precision and responsibility.
Vidarbha skipper Faiz Fazal 101 (99b, 9x4, 4x6) scored his 8th List A hundred and batted again with fluency but it was young Prabhsimran Singh (167, 140b, 13x4, 9x6) who showed everyone that he is learning fast to carry the bat deep, just like his Kings XI skipper KL Rahul.
Prabhsimran batted for 46.4 overs and kept on playing some audacious shots against Vidarbha bowlers. Though Vidarbha kept chipping in with wickets, they couldn't get the most important wicket of the day, as the hard-hitting Punjab opener made sure his side reached the target of 291 without much discomfort.
By the time he got out, Punjab needed only five and completed the victory with 13 balls and four wickets to spare. The loss put Vidarbha out of the race for knockouts as the Vidarbha bowlers again failed to do their job.
The Faiz Fazal-led side had made one change. They replaced Darshan Nalkande with Nachiket Bhute. However, that hardly made any difference as Bhute went for 28 in his first two overs. The momentum changed much before Vidarbha could even react.
Prabhsimran carried on and grew in confidence as the innings progressed. He played pace and spin with equal ease and hit all Vidarbha bowlers for the maximum. He had a 77-run stand with Sanvir Singh (33, 49b, 3x4) and an 80-run partnership with wicketkeeper Anmol Malhotra, which sealed the fate of the match.
Fazal did an almost similar job for Vidarbha. He would have loved to carry on after scoring his hundred but fell at the wrong time, leading to Vidarbha losing momentum.
In the company of Ganesh Satish (78, 82b, 7x4, 1x6), Fazal was looking to take the game away from Punjab before Siddharth Kaul's twin strikes, including the in-form Yash Rathod (1), in successive overs.
Even after that Vidarbha did well to recover through a 62-run stand between Satish and Akshay Wadkar but lost the former's wicket at the wrong time. Wadkar's enterprising 63 (53b, 4x4, 2x6) helped Vidarbha reach 290. They lost a wicket in every over after the 42nd over to hand over the advantage to Punjab.
In the end, it was a case of so near yet so far for Vidarbha, which they would regularly see in the previous decade, and who knows that better than their coach Pritam Gandhe, who was captain of the side then.
BRIEF SCORES: Vidarbha 290-9 in 50 overs (Faiz Fazal 101, Sanjay Ramaswamy 25, Ganesh Satish 78, Akshay Wadkar 63 not out; Siddharth Kaul 4-54, Harpreet Brar 4-43) lost to Punjab 294-6 in 47.5 overs (Prabhsimran Singh 167; Saurabh Dubey 2-50, Aditya Sarvate, Aditya Thakare and Akshay Karnewar one wicket each) by four wickets.