Virendra Gahwai, Bilaspur. Thanks to the brilliant batting of Anuj Chandra and Rishabh Sharma, Bilaspur entered the finals by defeating Rajnandgaon by 74 runs in the Under-19 Elite Group One Day Inter District Cricket Competition organized by Chhattisgarh State Cricket Association. Bilaspur will now play its title match against Raipur on October 22 at Rajnandgaon ground. Read this also: Dead body of Pando, who was missing for five days, was found in the forest, to mislead the police, his friend Pando had told a different story…

The semi-final match of the competition took place between Bilaspur and Rajnandgaon on 20 October, in which Bilaspur captain Aditya Srivastava won the toss and decided to bat first. Batting first, thanks to the brilliant 143-run partnership of Anuj Chandra and Rishabh Sharma, Bilaspur scored 292 runs after losing 8 wickets in the stipulated 50 overs.

Anuj Chandra scored 85 runs in 94 balls with the help of 9 fours, while Rishabh Sharma scored 64 runs in 64 balls with the help of 2 fours and 2 sixes, captain Aditya Srivastava scored 47 runs and Aryan Jaiswal scored unbeaten 25 runs. Bowling for Rajnandgaon, Yuktigya, Tirtha, Krishnam and Sanyam took two wickets each.

While chasing the target of 293 runs, Rajnandgaon team could score only 217 runs after losing 7 wickets in 50 overs. Batting for Rajnandgaon, captain B Balaji Rao scored 77 runs. Apart from him, Upendra Markam contributed 29 unbeaten runs and Shlok Chachane contributed 23 runs. While bowling brilliantly for Bilaspur, Uttam Tiwari took 4 wickets for 29 runs in 10 overs. Whereas Ayaan Upadhyay, Mohammad Saad and Qasim Mohammad took one wicket each.

The judge of the match was Shailesh Upadhyay and Manoj Singh, scorer was Mahendra Sahu, observer Sheikh Anwar. Bilaspur’s coaches are Sushant Shukla and S Javed. All this information was given by Vintesh Agarwal, Secretary of Bilaspur Cricket Association.