Shillong, Nov 23: Although they lost by 32 runs, Meghalaya put up a strong challenge to Vidarbha in their first match of the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2023-24, a BCCI domestic one day tournament for men, in Jaipur on Thursday.

A good team effort saw Meghalaya restrict Vidarbha to 243/9 in their 50 overs after the former won the toss and chose to field first. Meghalaya then ran their more established opponents close, finishing on 211 all out in 48.1 overs.

Dippu Ch Sangma and Kishan Lyngdoh were both making their state team return after missing out on the T20 matches in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy.

Dippu bowled a fine spell, collecting 4 wickets for 43 runs in 10 overs, while Kishan struck 57 from 75 deliveries in the chase. Further down the order, Swarajeet Das struck 44 from 46. These were the highest scores either batter has managed as well as being Dippu’s best bowling figures at this level of cricket.

It was Kishan and Swarajeet who helped put Meghalaya in a position to chase the target, as they made 78 for the fifth wicket, thereby doubling the team’s score, which had been reduced to 77/4 before the pair came together. Not only did they build a good partnership but they also did so quickly; Meghalaya took 24.5 overs to score 77 but Kishan and Swarajeet hit their 78 together in just 14 overs as the team needed to start pushing the run rate up.

However, the pressure to score even faster towards the end got too much and Meghalaya lost their last six wickets for 56 runs.

Earlier, Raj Biswa made 24 and guest player Nakul Verma 34 but the new guest player, Tanmay Mishra, missed out as he was dismissed for just 4.

In the first innings, twice Ranji Trophy champions Vidarbha, who have several Indian Premier League (IPL) players in the squad, were restricted to a gettable score.

Dippu took a wicket in his first over and added three more to finish with his best figures in domestic one day cricket. He accounted for both openers and two batters from the middle order.

Akash Kumar Choudhary opened the bowling and ended the innings with 2/47 in 10 overs, while Raj (1/21 in 4), Anish Charak (1/43 in 9) and Swarajeet (1/48 in 7) shared the other wickets between them.

Even though this was still a defeat, there were numerous positives for Meghalaya to take away from the game and they will look to go one better and secure victory in the second match, which will be against Chhattisgarh on Saturday.

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