All-rounder Abhishek Nayar back to business with a stoic 56 and 4wkts in the Purshottam Shield Tournament ‘17

Played at the Karnatak Sporting Association, Cross Maidan, it was a high octane match between two prolific teams namely DY Patil and Payyade Sports Club where in DY Patil won the toss and elected to bat first with the back of their in-form and strong batting line up.

Their decision to bat first was completely spot on as they managed to score a healthy total of 356 in69.4 overs. Openers Shoaib and Shashank gave a good start scoring 35 and 48 respectively.  Aggressive Aman scored a 27ball 42 followed by in-form Shubham Ranjane’s another half century. While Aman has continued to play aggressively throughout the tournament, we have also lost count of the number of runs piled up by Shubham Ranjane and Shashank. That was not all as their experienced & prolific all-rounder Abhishek Nayar at no.5 gave a crucial contribution scoring a solid 56 off 69balls (6fours, 1six). Abhishek is really looking in good touch and seems to be getting back in the groove. It was overall a collectively good batting perfomance by top order to lower middle order. Harmeet Singh and Vishal Dabholkar were the pick of the bowlers taking 4wkts each.

Chasing 357, Payyade were flattened out for just 207runs all out in 47.3 overs with their opener Akhil Herwadkar top scoring with 80runs. All-rounder Abhishek Nayar contributed with the ball too as he came up with excellent bowling figures of 4/21 in 9.3 overs which did the maximum damage. Karsh Kothari (3wkts) & Shubham(2wkts) also bowled well.  DY Patil won the match by 151runs and it was surely on the back of their collective team perfomance but Abhishek Nayar’s all-round contribution certainly became the highlight perfomance of the match. If Abhishek’s current perfomance is anything to go by, he is certainly giving strong signals of a promising season ahead in 2018 too.

CRICKETGRAPH