Nagaland makes its first ever first class cricket debut

Bihar beat Nagaland by 8 wickets

Kohima, Sep. 19 (EMN): Nagaland cricket team made its maiden entry into first class Indian cricket in the Vijay Hazare tournament of the BCCI at Gujarat but failed to beat Bihar and lost by 8 wickets in the first match on the opening day.

Nagaland team elected to bat first and scored a target of 253 losing eight wickets in 50 overs. Openers Nitish Lochab and Sedezhalie Rupreo set up a substantial partnership scoring 116 runs but Nitish got out to Samar Quadri in the 21.2 overs. Nitesh scored a total of 79 runs in 69 balls, while youngsters Sedezhalie scored 35 runs in 63 balls.

The team struggled thereafter losing wickets at regular interval but Imliwati Lemtur scored 45 runs (not out) in 41 balls to helpe the team reach the 250 mark at the end of the innings.

The captain of the Nagaland Jonathan Rongsen managed to score only 9 runs in 22 balls and Hokaito Zhimomi scored one runs in four balls during the match.  Young off-spinner Tahmeed Rahman scored 10 runs in his debut.

Guest players Abrar Kazi and Pawan contributed 19 runs and 21 runs for Nagaland.

Samar Quadri took three wickets while Rehan Khan and Keshav Kumar took two wickets each for Bihar.

In reply, Bihar batsmen Babul Kumar 121 (not out) and Keshav Kumar 76 (not out) overcame the target in 43.4 overs.

Vikash Ranjan scored 47 runs in 69 balls.

Imliwati Lemtur and Ravi Maurya took a wicket each for Nagaland team.

Nagaland all-rounder Imliwati scored 45 (not out) and took a wicket during his first class cricket debut.

Bihar team will be happy with the win after making a comeback into the mainstream cricket after 18 years.

On Friday, Nagaland will play their second match against Meghalaya.

A Rahman, the team manager and secretary, Nagaland Cricket Association speaking to Eastern Mirror said “We knew our team was against a much stronger opponent whose team captain is also a Indian player Praghyan Ozha, but our team put up a good score of 253. But we just could not defend it.”

On playing the first class cricket match, he said “It’s a dream come true for our officials and players of Nagaland, as the Supreme Court ordered all states to be a part of BCCI and we have to prepare all teams such as U16, U19, U23 and seniors’ men teams and also women teams for U-19, U-23 and senior team.”

He also mentioned that Nagaland under BCCI will play a total of 14 tournaments till March 2019 and each tournament will have around 8 matches.

The Vijay Hazare Trophy that got underway on Tuesday are playing in four different, the teams have been divided into four categories—Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D.

The new teams namely Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Bihar, Uttarakhand, and Puducherry are clubbed together in Group D from which one team will make it to the quarter-finals.

Mention can be made that a total of 13-member Nagaland cricket team along with three guest players and four support staffs are taking part in the tournament.  Kawaljit Singh, a veteran of 111 Ranji trophy matches and a Level-C coach from Hyderabad, is the coach of the team.

The three guest players are KB Pawan from Karnataka who has played about 50 Ranji Trophy matches, Abrar Kazi from Bengaluru, who played in the Ranji Trophy for Karnataka and in the IPL for Royal Challengers Bangalore and Pawan Suyal, who has played in the IPL for Mumbai Indians and Ranji Trophy from Delhi.

The team also includes Hokaito Zhimomi, former Ranji Trophy player from Assam, Jonathan Rongsen, former Ranji Trophy player for Railways along with youngsters like Sedezalie Rupereo who represented the NE U-19 team in 2016-17 and young off-spinner,Tahmeed who has recently captained the Zonal NE and Bihar U-19 team of the BCCI.