Lucknow: North Eastern Railway (NER) will face REPL Crusaders in the final of the G 20 BBD Senior Division Cricket League on Friday.
On Thursday, the NER defeated the Akhil Infra Cricket Club by five wickets in the second semi-final of the league played at KD Singh Babu Stadium here.
Akhil Infra won the toss and decided to bat. However, they were all out on 164 runs in 32 overs. Opener and captain of the team Shiv Singh returned to pavilion at the paltry score of three runs. Ajnay Suryavanshi (35) and Abhinav Dixit (57) played responsible innings, adding 35 runs for the second wicket partnership. Amit Chopra scored 34 runs off 33 balls with the help of three boundaries and a six.
For NER, Prashant Awasthi claimed three wickets in six overs. Saurabh Kashyap and Amit Singh claimed two wickets each.
In reply, NER reached the victory target of 165 runs in 29.4 overs for the fall of five wickets. NER too opened badly with opener Amit Singh returning to pavilion on six runs. However, at the other end Dinesh Kumar played some beautiful shots and scored 48 runs off 53 balls. Another batsman Saurabh Dubey made 16 runs. They were followed by Prashant Awasthi who scored 38 and remained unbeaten and Avinish Singh too remained unbeaten at 31.
For Akhil Infra, Sandeep Yadav claimed two wickets.