ONGC registers victory in opening match, face AI tomorrow

Lucknow, Jun 3 (UNI) Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Air India (AI) registered it's victory on the opening day of the 56th Sahara City Homes Sheesh Mahal cricket tournament here today.

On the opening day of the tournament's league matches ONGC beat Uttar Pradesh Cricket Association (UPCA) by 10 wickets at the Chowk stadium, while in the second league match at KD Singh Babu stadium Air India won against Pakistan's Karachi Jelani Tiger (KJT) by 46 runs.

With this win ONGC and AI both collected five points including one bonus point.

At the Chowk stadium ONGC's Sandeep Sharma registered the first unbeaten century (131) of the tournament and his opening wicket partner Gagan Khoda struck an unbeaten 84.

UPCA batted first and scored 203 in 40 overs for the loss of 6 wickets, setting the target of 204 for the rival team.

UPCA opening batsmen Eklavya and Ashish Yadav scored 54 and 64 runs respectively and were the highest scorers in their team, while, skippper Rizwan Shamshad claimed 3 wickets.

ONGC openers started aggressively from the first ball of the innings and both hardhitters Sandeep and Gagan remained undefeated at 107 and 84 runs respectively.

Sandeep struck 16 fours and two sixes in 95 balls, while Khoda faced only 85 balls for his 84 runs, including nine bounderies and two sixes.

In the other league match at Babu stadium AI posted a challenging target of 223 runs for KJT, though KJT began positively, but could not face the spinners and fell short of 46 runs to the target at 176.

Opener Jawed Qadir scored 52 runs with 8 bounderies, Arun Pandey and Deepak Joon claimed four wickets each.

ONGC will face AI at Babu stadium, while UPCA will compete with KJT at Chowk stadium in their next league matches tomorrow.

UNI KN PDM RAR HT1747