Post date: May 1, 2016 12:46:47 AM
Match against: North East Cricket Club
Venue : Young Cricket
Time : 16th Apr 2016 10 AM
Toss : Titans - Elected to Field
Team: Chaitanya, Varun, Shravan, Madhu, Srinu, Sudhir, Sankalp, Mansoor, Rajesh, Francis, Vineet
It was a good day for cricket, weather was perfect except for little breeze in the ground. After winning the toss, we decided to field first. Only reason for opting bowling is because there was little breeze which could help our swing bowlers and might be breeze would slow down by the time we start our batting. We had a decent start, so do NECC, they did not lose any wickets till 5th over. 5th over Chaitanya produced a magnificent ball which completely beat the batsmen and hit the tip of off-stump, their score was 19 that time. Game was equally poised at this time, however after this we had few issues bowling to the left hand batsman who was well settled. Vineet replaced Varun and Francis replaced Chaitanya. Vineet was bowling a nice line for the left hand batsman, it was difficult for them to score any runs of him, he also got wicket when Srinu took a good catch in short-midon region. But on the other end, though Francis was bowling beautifully for right handers, he was struggling to bowl to left hand batsman, who took advantage and scored few boundaries. We couldn't control the run flow towards the end of the innings, Srinu got a wicket at the end, Still NECC scored 144 runs.
We had a decent start chasing 145 runs, plan was to save wicket still keep the runs ticking. We scored around 55 runs when first wicket fell, Madhu was caught near the boundary while trying to hit spinner. He was replaced by Varun, which was possibly a bad decision because we needed some good hitter to accelerate the score. Varun and Srinu had good partnership, when the score was around 80 in 15 overs, Varun got out, which brought in Rajesh. Rajesh played really nice cricketing shots all around and did brought us some hopes in the game. However, good bowling from opponents we couldn't cross the line, we ended up with 125/4 at the end of our innings, losing 2 wickets in last 2 deliveries. Srinu was unbeaten with 47 runs, he was holding the fall of wickets at the other end.
Shravan, Rajesh, Mansoor, Sankalp, Sudhir all were very active in the field and that really motivates the entire team. This was the first game for most of them and they really did not get much oppurtunity to show their talent, as mentioned earlier, this is just a begining, I'm sure once we start playing 40 over games, you will all have lot to contribute. Please sharpen your skills during the practice and be ready for facing them.
Few points to be taken:
1. We need to practice bowling to a left hander. We really struggled big time bowling in good areas.
2. Chasing the target in this game was really good, I'm really proud of whatever we achieved in this game. We need to just keep doing it. This will help us in long run.
3. Srinu was struggling timing the ball at the end of the innings, it's mainly because of long innings he played. Well, fitness is must, however this can happen to any of us batting in the middle, in these cases its always better to take a single and give new batsmen strike.