New Delhi, In an absolute thriller, Tamil Nadu's Shahrukh Khan creamed a six with five needed off the final ball to give his team to retain the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy after defeating Karnataka in the finals at Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Monday.
As many as 16 runs were needed from the last over of Prateek Jain. Sai Kishore got a streaky boundary and managed to scramble for a single to give strike to Shahrukh. Two more runs were added to Tamil Nadu score after Prateek sent down two wide balls on the leg side.
Needing five runs of the final ball, Shahrukh positioned himself for a leggish ball and creamed a lofted flick for a six, registering a memorable win for Tamil Nadu.
After the fall of Hari Nishanth, who got off to a bit of a flier, Tamil Nadu were sluggish in their scoring. The chase looked impossible for them, until the final delivery of 19th over was leathered for a six.
After Shahrukh walked into the middle, he did not waste any time and smacked MB Darshan for a six and a boundary in the 17th over. This gave a much-needed impetus to Tamil Nadu after their middle order was pinned down by Karnataka spinners, especially KC Cariappa who removed set batsmen Vijay Shankar (18 off 22) and N Jagadeeshan (41 off 46) in the 16th over.
Earlier, Karnataka too had a see-sawing through the innings with their lower order largely responsible for the total going past 150. Karnataka lost three wickets of Kadam Kadam, Karun Nair and Manish Pandey in five overs.
Abhinav Manohar and BR Sharath rebuilt the innings with a 55-run stand for the fourth wicket. This laid the platform for J Suchith and Praveen Dubey to add 41 in just 19 balls at the back-end to take Karnataka to a total that kept them in the game, until Shahrukh blew their hopes away.
Brief Scores: Karnataka 151/7 (Abhinav Manohar 46; R Sai Kishore 3-12) lost to Tamil Nadu153/6 (N Jagadeesan 41, Shahrukh Khan 33*) by 4 wickets.