Kolkata Tigers defeated Hyderabad Heroes by 123 runs in a round robin game of the ICL 50's tournament being played in Chennai. Tigers captain and former India wicketkeeper Deep Dasgupta won the toss and decided to bat in extremely humid conditions.
The star of the show was Abhishek Jhunjhunwala who scored a brilliant hundred to set up a comfortable victory for the Tigers.
Electing to bat the Tigers managed to put on 279 in their 50 overs.
Their innings was off to a shaky start as both openers were back in the pavilion by the 3rd over, with the score on 12. This brought in Jhunjhunwala and Rajiv Kumar together and they put on 99 runs to take the Tigers to a safer position.
Man-of-the-match Jhunjhunwala struck a fine hundred (104) and was clearly the star of the show.
Kumar gave him able support with a 55-ball 54. Kumar's wicket brought in Rohan Gavaskar who only managed a sedate 24 to help put on 67 runs with Jhunjhunwala.
Kolkata captain Dasgupta (33) and Shib Sagar Singh (23) struck some lusty blows to take Kolkata the total past 275 runs.
The stand out performance for the Heroes came from their opening bowler Kaushik Reddy who took 4 for 38 to keep the Tigers total in check.
In their reply, the Heroes batsmen faltered badly as they were skittled out for a meager 156 in the 35th over.
Heroes never managed to get going and were set back by some inspiring bowling from Tiger's new ball pair. The Heroes were reeling at 69-6 in the 16th over and never managed to recover from that position.
The chief architect of the collapse was Tiger's opening bowler Sayed Akhlak Ahmed who picked up the tournament's first five-wicket haul with figures of 5 for 34.
Once Ahmed had seized the initiative, the game was out of Heroes' grasp and they folded up without a fight. The only spark in the Heroes' innings came from Stuart Binny, who in some rear guard action scored a run-a-ball 64.
The Heroes need to get their act together quickly as they have now lost both their games in the tournament and face the threat of elimination.
Meanwhile the Tigers will be high on confidence after their resounding victory.
