Hattrickers VS Centurions


Snatched defeat from the jaws of victory
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No. This report is not about a match in which our Indian cricket team was 
involved. It is exactly what happened today in our match with Centurions.
To start off with, we could not play a 25 over game as the Centurions turned up 
30 minutes late to the venue (for a change, it wasn't us :). It is 
worth mentioning it that there were 6 hattrickers who had come to the ground by 
7:45 and were practising). We elected to field after winning the toss.
Their openers played really well and got their team off to a flying start to 
score 24 for no loss after the first 5 overs. But a direct shot by Himanashu 
from the deep covers at the non striker's end gave the much needed breakthrough 
in the 7th over. It allowed our bowlers to come back in a great way with the 
10th and 11th overs bowled by Palash and Pratap were maidens with Palash taking 
a wicket in the 10th and Pratap taking 2 wickets (thanks to some great catches, 
especially the one in the deep square leg region by Anirudh. Reminded us of 
Kapil Dev's catch in the 1983 world cup to dismiss Viv Richards). 
That reduced their score to 39/4 after 11 overs. After that their wickets kept 
falling regularly thanks to some run outs and some good bowling by Aniket 
(Himanshu's friend), but their slog hitting towards the end of the innings got 
them some runs in boundaries (which should have been catches, but were dropped 
by "Mr.Dependable" (name withheld upon request)). They managed to score 72 off 
the 20 overs to end the innings. Anirudh and Pratap took 2 wickets each while 
Palash and Himanshu got a wicket each. There were 5 run outs in their innings.
(They played with 12 batsmen). We did not bowl many wides today and that is a good sign.

In reply, Raghu and Ramesh started off well with runs mainly coming in 1s and 2s 
in the opening overs. We managed to get to 23 runs in 7 overs for 
the opening wicket before Raghu was run out in the last ball off the 7th over 
going for a 2nd run. Anirudh came 1 down and soon runs started flowing 
with him scoring couple of boundaries to the fine leg region. Just when things 
were beginning to look easy for us, Anirudh was bowled going for a big shot in 
thhe 10th over with the score at 40. That proved to be the turning point of the 
game with our middle order getting out without much contribution and soon we 
were left reeling at 50/7 in 15 overs. Our tail enders could not the remaining runs 
and we were left stranded at 68/9 after 20 overs. Once again Anirudh top scored 
with 12 and Raghu and Ramesh scored 11 runs each. Their were 18 extras in our 
innings. So only 50 runs were scored off the bat.

As expected no one from our side is MOM, though Anirudh once again stood out for 
his allround performance.

On a side note, Palash has been taking the kit for the last couple of weeks 
eventhough it is not his turn. We need to revisit this.