Shahbaz Ahmed hit a fighting century in Bengal’s quarterfinal of the Vijay Hazare Trophy 2023 match against Haryana on Monday, December 11 at the Saurashtra Cricket Association Stadium in Rajkot. It also happened to be his third hundred in List A cricket.

The southpaw scored a hundred after Bengal were reduced to 93 for the loss of five wickets in 25.1 overs after being put in to bat first. In the final over of Bengal’s innings bowled by Rahul Tewatia, Shahbaz got to his century off 115 balls.

Shahbaz scored 100 runs off 118 balls with four fours and as many sixes before Tewatia accounted for his wicket. On the back of his knock, Bengal scored 225 in 50 overs. Apart from Shahbaz, none of the Bengal batters put up a fight.

Shahbaz also put on a partnership of 52 runs for the seventh wicket along with Pradipta Pramanik, who played a handy knock of 21 lower down the order.

Abhishek Porel, Sudip Kumar Gharami, Anustup Majumdar and Karan Lal scored 24, 21, 14 and 13 respectively, but none of them were able to make their starts count.

Yuzvendra Chahal was the pick of the bowlers for Haryana after he finished with figures of 10-0-37-4. Tewatia and Sumit Kumar accounted for two scalps apiece.

As far as Shahbaz is concerned, he was recently traded from the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) to the Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) ahead of the 2024 edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

In 39 matches in the IPL since his debut back in 2020 against the Rajasthan Royals (RR), Shahbaz has scored 321 runs at an average of 16.89 and picked up 14 wickets at an economy rate of 9.15.

Shahbaz was also a part of the Indian team that won the gold medal in the Asian Games 2023 that took place in Hangzhou.