Ahmedabad: Opener S K Patel slammed a brilliant 146 to help Gujarat thrash Saurashtra by 83 runs in a West Zone leg match of the Vijay Hazare Trophy here today.
Put into bat, Gujarat sent the Saurashtra bowlers for a leatherhunt to pile up 348 for four. Gujarat then restricted Saurashtra to 265 for eight to register a comprehensive win at the Motera 'A' Ground.
Patel first shared 143 runs for the opening wicket with P K Panchal (74) and then had another 107-run stand with Y Venugopal Rao (64) to take Gujarat to a huge score.
Patel's 147-ball knock included 14 boundaries while Panchal faced 79 balls and hit five fours and two sixes in his knock. Venugopal Rao's aggressive 41-ball innings contained three fours and four sixes.
Patel was the fourth and last Gujarat batsman dismissed and he was out in the penultimate over.
For Saurashtra, Sudeep Tyagi grabbed two wickets for 66 runs while S K Trivedi and K C Raval got a wicket each.
Saurashtra needed a big partnership to take shot at the mammoth target of 349 for a win, but that did not come. Their biggest partnership was the 57 for the opening wicket between Sheldon Jackson (81) and Sagar Jogiyani (19).
Jackson was the lone hand to have come up with a substantial contribution while his other colleagues failed to come upto the challenge.
When Jackson was out in the 30th over with the team score reading 163 for four, Saurashtra were looking down the barrel as they needed more than 180 runs for a win from 20 overs and six wickets remaining.
Saurashtra eventually ended far short of the target as they ended their innings at 265 for eight.
For Gujarat, R B Kalaria grabbed three wickets for 39 runs while Ishwar Chaudhary and H R Patel took two wickets each.
Brief Scores:
Gujarat: 348 for 4 in 50 overs (S K Patel 146, P K Panchal 74, Y Venugopal Rao 64; Sudeep Tyagi 2/66).
Saurashtra: 265 for 8 in 50 overs (Sheldon Jackson 81; R B Kalaria 3/39).
