Bengal virtually out of Mushtaq T20 after losing to Vidarbha

Sedate batting by Bengal openers led to their third defeat as hosts Vidarbha kept their quarter-final hopes alive with a four wicket win a group A league encounter of the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament, here today.
While Vidarbha with 12 points from 4 games still have two games left, Bengal with only 8 points from five games with a match left against Haryana are almost out of contention unless something miraculous happens and results fall in place.
Batting first, Bengal managed an unimpressive 147 for five in 20 overs largely due to the slow batting from opener Abhishek Das, who struggled to reach 56 consuming 52 deliveries in the process.

Das and other opener Sayan Sekhar Mondal (52 off 38 balls) added 98 for the opening wicket but it took them 13 overs in reaching that score. The pressure that they put on the remaining batsmen showed as Bengal managed only 49 runs in the next seven overs losing five wickets in the process.
In reply, skipper Faiz Fazal (49) and Apoorv Wankhede (37) were the architects of the Vidarbha victory as they achieved the target with four balls to spare. Skipper Ashok Dinda, who was brilliant against HP leaked runs giving away 33 in 3.2 overs.
Brief Scores: Bengal 147/5 (Abhishek Das 56, Sayan Sekhar Mondal 52, Akshay Karnewar 2/26)

Vidarbha 151/6 (Faiz Fazal 49, Apoorv Wankhede 37). Vidarbha won by 4 wkts.