Birthday boy Abhimanyu Mithun made the occasion further special by delivering a hat-trick as well as the Vijay Hazare Trophy for Karnataka in the final against Tamil Nadu. Mithun began by removing opener Murali Vijay for a duck in the first over before his colleague V Koushik sent back the promoted R Ashwin for 8. That reduced Tamil Nadu to 24 for 2 before Abhinav Mukund and Baba Aparajith got down for repair work.

The left-right combination snatched the momentum back from Karnataka in what would turn out to be the only time that Tamil Nadu would dominate the game. A stand of 124 that had started patiently slowly gained pace before debutant left-arm pacer Prateek Jain accounted for Mukund for 85, as the latter attempted to clear extra cover but found Mayank Agarwal. Though Aparajith continued to push the run rate, a mix up with Vijay Shankar led to his run out for 66 just when a lengthy stay would have helped his side pile on big runs.

That opened the floodgates with captain Dinesh Karthik departing cheaply for 11 and Shankar throwing away a positive start of 38 from 35 balls, landing a full toss off Mithun in the hands of Karun Nair at long on. Shahrukh Khan, the new find, tried his best to utilize whatever overs were left at the death but became the first of Mithun's hat-trick victims in the final over. Off the next ball, M Mohammed fell to an excellent catch at deep point by Devdutt Padikkal as Mithun rounded off the innings with three wickets off three balls by having M Ashwin caught at cover as Tamil Nadu finished on 252.

Karnataka started off on an attacking note but lost Padikkal early, bowled for 11 off Washington Sundar, who opened the bowling alongside R Ashwin. But that was it for the bowlers as far as their defence was concerned. KL Rahul and Agarwal joined hands once again to punish the opposition bowlers.

Agarwal, as expected, began aggressively with a six off Shankar over extra-cover off just his sixth delivery. That set up the chase well, with one boundary after the other hit consistently. While Agarwal maintained the pace of the innings, Rahul at the other end ensured no further wicket was lost with a steady innings of 52* from 72 balls. While Agarwal ended on 69* with 7 fours and 3 sixes, Rahul brought up his with a four before bad light and then rain stopped play with Karnataka at 146 for 1.

No further play was possible under dark clouds and rain, with the hosts taking the final by 60 runs via the VJD method. Mithun, on his 30th birthday, had bagged career-best List A figures of 5 for 34 to help set-up a fourth title for his team in front of the healthiest crowd that the tournament had seen in the entire season.