It will be Tamil Nadu vs Karnataka in Ranji final

KOLKATA: Tamil Nadu prevented a repeat of last year's final as they beat Maharashtra on first-innings lead at the Eden Gardens on Sunday to set up a Ranji Trophy summit clash with Karnataka.
Abhinav Mukund's boys prevailed in a battle of perseverance which saw more than 1000 runs being scored in the first two innings which lasted about four and a half days.
Last year's runners-up Maharashtra were in the hunt to make the final for a second consecutive year as they began the final day on 394 for 5, but all-rounder Vijay Shankar tilted the balance in Tamil Nadu's favour in the 11th over of the morning when he sent back both overnight unbeaten batsmen.
Maharashtra skipper Rohit Motwani was the first to go when the lefthander got an edge while trying to pull Shankar to be caught by wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik for 11.
Two balls later, Ankit Bawne nicked an away-going delivery to Ramaswamy Prasanna at first slip to fall for 57. At 412 for seven, it was an uphill task for the Maharashtra tail to topple TN's first-innings total of 549 and they folded up for 454 within two hours on the final day, thus falling short of by 95 runs.
Pacer Aswin Crist dismissed Anupam Sanklecha and Domnic Joseph, when Samad Fallah was run out going for a non-existent run to end the Maharashtra innings.
Tamil Nadu got some useful batting practice in their second essay with both Mukund and Baba Aparajith helping themselves to half-centuries and staying unbeaten on 66 and 51, respectively, when play was called off just after the tea break.
Skipper Mukund was a happy man after TN made the Ranji Trophy final for the 12th time. "It was a tough match.
In spite of putting up a huge score, we were never relaxed as they were scoring briskly . But at the same time we knew any 500-plus score is not going to be easy to overhaul," he stated.
The opener felt getting two quick wickets in the morning changed the course of the match and praised Man-of-the-Match Vijay Shankar.
"Shankar is developing into a good all-rounder. He had a great spell yesterday and I felt he was unlucky... brought him as first-change this morning and the move clicked," quipped the skipper.
TN fined for slow over-rate
Tamil Nadu were fined for 'serious over-rate offence' as they were found to be eight overs short. Match referee Sunil Chaturvedi docked captain Abhinav Mukund 40 per cent of his match fee, while his teammates were fined 20 per cent of their fee.
Brief Scores:
Tamil Nadu: 549 & 119 for no loss in 46.2 overs (Abhinav Mukund 66 not out, Baba Aparajith 51 not out) vs Maharashtra 1st inngs: 454 all out in 142 overs (Swapnil Gugale 154, Chirag Khurana 125, Ankit Bawne 57; Aswin Crist 4 89).