Kolkata: Fast bowler Mukesh Kumar took his career-best six wickets as Bengal defeated Karnataka by 174 runs on Tuesday on the fourth day of the Ranji Trophy semi-final and made it to the Ranji Trophy final for the first time in 13 years.
Mukesh took six wickets for 61 runs, chasing the target of 352 runs, and Karnataka were bowled out for 177 runs in 55.3 overs in the second innings. Ishan Porel and Akash Deep also picked up 2-2 wickets each from Bengal.
The Karnataka team came out to play on 98 for three on Tuesday and the team lost the remaining seven wickets in the morning session by adding 79 runs in 16.3 overs. Bengal won their previous Ranji title in 1989–90 during Saurabh Ganguly’s debut season while the team last made it to the finals in 2007 but were defeated by Mumbai by 132 runs in the final. In the final, Bengal will face the winner of another semi-final between Gujarat and Saurashtra in Rajkot.
The final will be played from March 9 but the Bengal team will have to play this match on the ground of the opposition team. Bengal also prevented Karnataka from making a trio of titles. Karnataka recently won the domestic ODI (Vijay Hazare Trophy) and T20 tournament (Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy). The team was earlier successful in making the title trio for the second consecutive time in 2014-15