Hello and welcome to CricketCountry’s live coverage of the upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy 2015-16 Group B match between Karnataka and Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru on Friday, December 18. Karnataka are placed third in their group at the moment, after winning three and losing a couple in their five games in the round-robin stage so far, while J&K will be playing for pride in the upcoming match, having been knocked out for good after losing all five matches that they’ve featured in so far. For Karnataka, winning this match by a big margin is a must lest they intend to pile further misery on themselves after they were knocked out of the ongoing Ranji Trophy 2015-16 in the group stage, finishing fifth in Group A.
Live Cricket Score: Karnataka 62/1 | Overs 12 | BATSMEN: Mayank Agarwal 27(36), Karun Nair 10(14): Karnataka are off to a good start, going at a rate of almost 6. Although Jammu and Kashmir made an early breakthrough with the wicket of KL Rahul, Nair and Agarwal have managed to help Karnataka recover. OUT! K L Rahul LBW Zahoor Sofi 22(22)
Karnataka, who had emphatically won their second consecutive title in the previous season, thrashed Kerala in a completely one-sided contest in their previous Group B fixture at Bengaluru. Kerala were bowled out for a meagre 49 in 22 overs, with Shreyas Gopal leading the destruction with figures of 5 for 19. Karnataka then chased the target down in less than six overs, though opener Mayank Agarwal was dismissed during the course of the innings. It turned out to be the second-shortest match in the history of the tournament.
Squads:
Karnataka: Vinay Kumar (c), Mayank Agarwal, Sreenath Aravind, Stuart Binny, Praveen Dubey, CM Gautam (wk), Shreyas Gopal, Aniruddha Joshi, Sadiq Kirmani (wk), David Mathias, Abhimanyu Mithun, Karun Nair, Manish Pandey, KL Rahul, Abhishek Reddy, Ravikumar Samarth, Jagadeesha Suchith.
Jammu and Kashmir: Mithun Manhas (c), Zahoor Sofi, Amir Sofi, Bandeep Singh, Ram Dayal, Shubham Khajuria, Mohsin Mufti, Parvez Rasool, Pranav Gupta, Asif Rasool, Rohit Sharma, Sandeep Singh (wk), Ian Dev Singh, Suhail Andleev, Umar Alam, Umar Nazir Mir, Waseem Raza.