India’s blind cricket team has successfully made it to the finals for the third time in the Blind T20 World Cup.
In the semifinals, India beat South Africa as Ajay Kumar Reddy and Sunil Ramesh gave all-round displays in performance.
Ramesh was successful in scoring his second ton of the tournament and also took a wicket in the second innings of the match.
Skipper Reddy was in red-hot action as well as he took three wickets and made 81 runs.
In the finals, India will be up against Bangladesh who beat Sri Lanka in the semifinals by 64 runs.
M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru will host the final of the Blind T20 World Cup between India and Bangladesh.
Chronology of the India vs South Africa Semifinal
India lost the toss and was asked to bat first. In just four overs, India lost both their openers Lokesh and A. Ravi.
The score was a mere 50 runs when both the openers returned to the pavilion. Ravi made 30 runs and Sujit Munda was also dismissed by the 6th over and made only 14 runs.
That’s when Ramesh and skipper Reddy joined hands in the middle and put a huge partnership of 144 runs for the 4th wicket.
After them, D. Venkateswara Rao and keeper Prakash Jayaramaiah added more runs to take India past 300. India ended their innings at 337/6.
It was a tough ask for South Africa’s blind cricket team as they started losing wickets at regular intervals and did not have any answer to India’s huge target.
Bhule Bhidla and Lwande Bhilda put up some resistance for the last wicket as they added 53 runs for the 9th wicket.
But Praveen Kumar Sharma dismissed Lwande for 23 runs and India won the game.
Chronology of Bangladesh vs Sri Lanka semifinal
Sri Lanka won the toss in the other semifinal and decided to field first. The game was already reduced to 17 overs per side.
Bangladesh’s openers Salman and Md. Ashiqur Rahman played brilliantly to stitch together a partnership of 154 runs for the 1st wicket.
Ashiqur scored 70 runs from 46 balls while Salman scored 61 runs from 39 balls.
In the end, Bangladesh’s blind cricket team lost only 3 wickets and finished their innings at 188 in 17 overs.
In the second innings, Sri Lanka blind cricket team started off well with openers Suranga Sampath and Ruwan Wasantha playing some aggressive shots.
However, they started losing wickets quickly as Bangladesh were quick in their fielding and ran out 5 Sri Lankan batters.
For Bangladesh, Ashiqur Rahman took 2 wickets while Tanzil, Abid, and Mahmud Rashid got one wicket each.
The tournament is being broadcasted at DD Sports and the final will start at 11 AM IST.
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