Saturday Cricket Club Blog

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Saturday CC romps to 2nd win at TCA Open 2006

Saturday CC were playing their second match in this TCA Open 2006 this morning against Discers. There was a lot of cloud cover as players assembled at John Horner for the game. Wasim was back for this game while Shiv missed out with a viral infection. However the opposition suffered today from a heavy Viral Infection themselves. Sounds crazy???? Read on!

Before the game began, one look at the ground and our Captain knew that this would be a high scoring affair. The John Horner ground presented scoring opportunities in all directions as well as a fast and somewhat uneven outfield.

Discers won the toss and elected to Field first. Their decision seemed to be vindicated as Nadeem was bowled in the second over of a Fast incutter. With last match's Highest scorer back in the hut, others would have to pick up the slack today. Naresh was in next. The score was moving along steadily when Naresh threw away his wicket of a juicy Full Toss. The Score was 16 when Kedar M joined the Not Out opener in the 6th over. What followed was a display of wonderful batsmanship.

The two batsmen began finding the gaps easily for singles and doubles, and the occasional 3s. The score had moved to 33 in 9 overs when Kedar M unleashed the first of his 3 boundaries. Both batsmen took the team to 40 without further damage at the break. As is the usual practice, guys were discussing potential scores and all felt that 100 seemed like a reachable target.

After the break, the tempo suddenly changed as Kedar started decimating the bowling attack and along with that the confidence of the Discers players. Boundaries started flowing from all directions as Kedar had a Pull Boundary, a Wonderful upper cut over covers and a straight boundary. The pair also collected a boundary of an overthrow as the fielding team wilted under the pressure. 25 runs came of the 1st 3 overs after the break when Kedar tried to hit one boundary too many and holed out at Long Off. He scored a wonderful 26 runs. All the shots he hit were clean hits and went exactly where they were intented to go. All of us outside the boundary line were in awe of his hitting. At that time, his partner was still there on 22 of 28 deliveries with one boundary of a misfield and a 5 , courtesy of the overthrow mentioned earlier. Nothing spectacular, really.

But any doubts that the overall score might suffer because of Kedar M's wicket were laid to rest by this Man. First, in the company of Madan, and then in the company of Kedar B, he went about collecting runs at a fast clip adding 2 wonderful boundaries of his own. He scored 22 runs in 15 deliveries after Kedar M's wicket and ended up carrying his bat as he was unbeaten on 44. Name of this batsman ??? VIRAL.

His awesome batting display saw SatCC score 115 runs in 20 overs. Madan and Kedar B chipped in with 11 and 9 runs respectively at a Run-a-ball. Viral effectively batted Discers out of this game as he mixed nudges and taps with text book drives and some pulls and swipes in the midwicket region.

With such a huge score to chase, the opposition required a quick start. But they had probably not accounted for the accurate and stingy bowling of Wasim and Shantanu. While neither of them got a wicket, they put the brakes on the scoring and by the time they were done with their spells, Discers had managed a meagre 24 of 8 overs, with Abhay getting a wicket in the 1 over he bowled during this time. This was just the type of bowling efforts we needed from from our opening pair. The 2 batsmen at crease tried to up the tempo a bit as Discers went into the 10 over break at 35/1. Scoring 80 of 10 overs was never going to be easy against SatCC with their quality bowling, which is, more often than not, backed up by some very good fielding.

Wasim started the wicket procession with a diving stop at Short Mid on to run out one of the batsmen. With Discers getting desperate, every one of our bowlers chipped in with a decent effort. With victory almost certain, our captain was able to utilize the bowling services of a lot of people in the last 10 overs. Kedar B, bowling after a long lay off, was a bit rusty but chipped in with 3 wickets. He was helped in particular by one special Gyanesh beauty, who took a stunning catch at short mid-on. Kedar B himself took 2 very good out field catches.

Gyanesh had a couple of wickets himself and Karthik finished things off by toppling the last batsman's stumps as Discers were all out for 82. And ohh yeah, Viral had a hand to play in the field as well. He effected a run out off a direct hit from the point region, with only one stump in his line of vision. The overall fielding effort was great with Gyanesh and Kedar B very effective and sure-handed in the bumpy uneven outfield.

This was a great win that had 2 great batting performances, a couple of brilliant individual fielding efforts and decent bowling from every one on our side. I guess there cannot be many complaints after such a dominating performance. But I, not always the voice of reason or logic or common sense on this team, cant help but point out to the 18 wides bowled by us. That aside, everything clicked today.

Now the key is to come up with similar performances while cutting down a whole lot on the Extras.

The virus that infected the Discers, Viral was an easy choice for Man of the Match Honors.

Cheers
Madan

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