Mansa hands out crushing defeat to Ludhiana

Mansa handed out a crushing defeat, by 114 runs, to Ludhiana in the third league match of Group-D in the ongoing Punjab State Inter-District One Day Limited Overs Cricket Tournament for Katoch Shield. The event is being organised by the Punjab Cricket Association at various venues across the state. The match was played at Mansa on Monday.

Batting first, hosts Mansa posted a decent total of 305 runs with the main contributions coming through Aaditya Balana (51), Deepinder Singh Cheema (44), Anmol Jain (42), Randeep Singh (37), Satyam Sharma (35) and Pukhraajdeep Singh Dhaliwal, who scored 32 runs.

For the visitors, captain and IPL player Nehal Wadhera was the pick of bowlers, securing six wickets for 73 runs in ten overs. Aradhya Shukla, Ravi Kumar and Saksham Vij captured one wicket each.

Ludhiana began their reply on a dismal note, losing four wickets with just nine runs on the board. However, after some resilience by Vaibhav Kalra (54*), Tanroop Saini (42), Gurjot Singh Singh (40) and Saksham Vij (22), Ludhiana’s innings culminated at 191 runs in 42.3 overs.

This was the second consecutive defeat for Ludhiana men, in the match against Sangrur, Ludhiana lost by four runs and the match against Patiala was abandoned due to rain. Ludhiana, with only two points, are tottering at the bottom of points table. The last league match will be played between Ludhiana and Barnala on July 23.