Match against SDCricInfo on 11/22/2008

We won the toss and elected to field in the 20 over game played against SDCricInfo at Miramar College Ground (Big)

Vijay S and Sam opened the bowling. The openers of SDCricInfo did well to score 21 in 3 overs without losing a wicket. Rosie was introduced in the 4th over and struck with just the fourth ball. He picked another wicket in his second over and the score at the end of 6 overs was 30/2. SDCricInfo lost two more wickets and reached 47/4 in 10 overs. It was crucial to restrict the opposition to about 80-85 knowing our failure in recent times in chasing totals requiring an asking rate of even below 5 rpo. Hari then struck with two wickets in the 15th over and conceded no runs in the over. Vijay S followed it up with a wicket in the next and the score read 66/7 in 16 overs. We were expected to restrict the opposition to our target score but that was not how things worked out. 32 runs were conceded in the final 4 overs. Ajay (2), Sam (1) and Rosie (1) were tasked with the final 4 overs. Prashant and Murali played well, scoring singles on shots where the batsmen should have been run-out.

In the end we conceded 97 runs in 20 overs picking up 8 wickets in the process. Hari (3), Rosie (2) and Vijay S (1) were among the wickets. Hari with figures of 4-0-14-3 was the pick of the bowlers. Vijay S (17 in 4 overs) and Rosie (18 in 4 overs) did well with the ball. Sam (26 in 4 overs) and Ajay (22 in 4 overs) provided good support to the others while bowling. Sam and Vijay S held good high catches running around. Rajesh and Rosie helped get batsmen run-out with good acts in the field.

Parag and Sam opened the batting. Sam struck Rajendra for a boundary on the last ball of the second over but fell very soon on the last ball of the 3rd over. Suresh fell pretty soon with the score on 20 and in walked in Hari. Hari and Parag steadied the inning to take the team to 51/2 in 10 overs. We were helped by a steady flow of extras from the SDCricInfo bowlers. One over from Praveen brought us 6 wides and a no ball.

Immediately after the break Hari began the acceleration that brought us scores of 10, 12, 10, 7 in the next 4 overs. Hari sprinted for quite a few twos and also struck Rajendra for two successive boundaries. Parag struck Balaji for a six over square leg and hit Prashant for a straight four. A four over fine leg brought the team victory with 8 wickets in hand. It was a 79 run unbeaten partnership between Hari (30 in 35b, 2*4) and Parag (33 in 46b, 2*4, 1*6) that helped us reach a score of 99 with 25 balls pending.

Hari with an unbeaten 30 with the bat and 3 wickets with the ball is undoubtedly the MoM for this game. Let's make this a habit and keep winning games as convicingly as on this ocassion.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pEn3926bpcppAkWV7Z4A3Xw&hl=en