Mandeep Singh led from the front with an unbeaten 99 to help Punjab trounce Tripura by five wickets on Monday and storm into the quarterfinals of the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 Trophy as table-toppers from Group A.
Defending champions Karnataka also remained in the hunt for the last-eight berth, securing a five-wicket win over Uttar Pradesh that took their net run-rate to 0.292.
Unbeaten Baroda qualified for the knockout stage as they finished on top in Group C following a 12-run win over Gujarat. Jharkhand saw off the challenge of Hyderabad via a super over in an Elite Group B match.
Five Elite group winners and the Plate group toppers qualify directly, while the remaining two spots are grabbed by the two best teams from across the Elite groups, decided on the basis of points, wins, head-to-head and net run rate, in that order.
Group A
Tripura’s decision to field backfired at the KSCA Cricket (2) Ground as Mandeep took the opposition bowling attack to cleaners, smashing four…