Match Report: Eagles vs Galloway, 07/08/12 @ Far hills

by Murali

Result: Intone Eagles CC lost by 1 run. Galloway CC: 103 /10, Intone 102/10 Toss: Galloway CC

Bowling/FieldingGalloway CC won the toss and batted first. We did very well in bowling and fielding, I and Shakti started our bowling attacked and both of us were successful in sending their top order back to pavilion in our 1st spell itself. Shakti especially, was once again on fire claiming the opener in his 1st over and 2 more in his 2nd over in 2 consecutive delivers, he was unlucky to get a hat-trick but bowled an exceptional spell.
Their lower middle order showed a lot of resistance, granted they really didn’t know how to bat…but showed presence of mind patience…just defending any straight ball and leaving any ball out-side off stump. Our bowlers Shakti, I, Srinath, Lucky, Asif, Dhanu bowled well to break them, but they didn’t even try to score singles and really frustrated us. .Finally after the 3rd drinks break (30 overs) Asif (1 wkt) and Lahiru (3 wkts) got the break thru and packed them up. We did give lot of freebees in wides and helped them in putting up 103/10 in 37 overs. Uday (3 caught behinds) and Bala (2 caught behinds) did very well behind the stumps.

Batting:Chasing 103 in 40 overs seemed very easily achievable. Asif and Dhanu opened the innings. Asif looked good, started off with a boundary in the 1st over and Dhanu too started off well. But Asif fell in the 2nd over and Dhanu too followed him with a simple run-out. Lucky played well and seemed very comfortable, but he did not get support from the other end as our batting started falling apart, giving away wickets almost one in every over. Lahiru showed some intent with couple of good shots, but fell soon. Vishal got out on a very good ball, I tried to support Lucky in just rotating the strike and giving Lucky most of the strike, but I didn’t last long enough; went into completely defensive mode tapping down every ball and eventually gave away (lbw) trying to play a cross batted shot to get a single and give strike to Lucky which was really un necessary shot and that time. Lucky tried all he can…showed a lot of patience and worked hard to get us past 70 runs.

But he was unlucky to have given lbw on a ball that was clearly going down the leg-side when he tried to flick it for a single. Bala and Shakti tried, but Shakti got out which trying to score on a full toss which took the edge his bat, the ball popped-up high towards 3rd man and their fielder made no mistake in catching it. We are 78/9 again requiring 26 to win. Finally Srinath and Bala came to recuse us. Both of them batted really well..Srinath played with ease and with lot of confidence..starting off with his square cut boundary and both of them continued to march towards victory and got us very close requiring just 2 runs to win and 1 run to tie. We were all ready to jump up in excitement. Galloway ran out of bowlers, but they finally succeeded in forcing Srinath to steer a high bounce ball just outside off stump to the keeper. He was very unlucky; probably this is the 1st time he got out in his entire career with our club. Both Bala and Srinath did all the hard work to get us sooo close.

Their innings was the best part of our batting. Except for Lucky, Bala and Srinath none of us batted to our potential. They really showed us (all the batsmen who went and got out cheaply how to bat under pressure. There is definitely lot to learn from them. We should bat with ease and confidence. We should bat to score runs instead of just going under the shell and getting out cheaply under pressure. Granted we did not have couple of our strong and reliable batsmen (Dilip, Ananth, Chinmay and Sid), but this game ..having to chase such a low total.. ..we should have won it very easily.  Yes, it’s disappointing to loose such an easy game. It’s okay; it happens in the game of cricket. Even international teams having professional, skilled and experienced batsmen fall for a low total.

Overall it was a close game and we fought till the last run. Looking at the positive side, we bowled exceptionally well on a very hot and humid day, restricted the opponents to just 103. The five caught behinds in this game shows how good the line and length of our bowlers was. It’s just the batting failure that costed us the game. We all know how to bat and are all decent batsmen who scored well and proved it in the recent games this season. Past two games were just a bad patch. Let’s leave it behind us. I am very confident in our team’s strength. We’ll play with more confidence, bounce back strong and move forward with positive frame of mind.

Score Card

Match # 6062
Galloway Cricket Club v/s Intone Eagles Cricket Club
Far Hills
07/08/2012(40-over match)
Result	Galloway Won Galloway Cricket Club:103/10 in 40.0 Intone Eagles Cricket Club:102/10 in 33.0
Comments
Toss	Galloway Cricket Club
Umpires	Yasir Iqbal (5648)
Man of the Match	1.Deepak Chauhan
	2.Lahiru Rathnayake
Galloway Cricket Club Innings  (40 overs maximum)       R B 4 6 chintan biggie patel Caught   Shakthi Vijay 1 0 0 0 Chirag Desai Caught   Shakthi Vijay 0 0 0 0 harshal patel Caught   Murali Vijjapurapu 4 0 0 0 Deepak Chauhan Caught   Asif Mahmood 10 0 0 0 jigar k joshi Caught   Shakthi Vijay 10 0 0 0 sujay patel Caught   Sreenath Nandyala 3 0 0 0 Hassan A Dar Bowled   Lahiru Rathnayake 21 0 0 0 Jwalit Ray Caught   Lahiru Rathnayake 15 0 0 0 Arpan Shah Caught   Lahiru Rathnayake 6 0 0 0 Parag Kansagra Not Out     1 0 0 0 Niraj a Kansagara Run Out     0 0 0 0
Extras	(b 3, lb 3, w 15, nb 13)
Totals	(10 wickets in 40.0 overs) 103
FOW
Bowling O B M R W Murali Vijjapurapu 7 0 1 17 1 Shakthi Vijay 8 0 3 15 3 Sreenath Nandyala 3 0 0 8 1 Asif Mahmood 6 0 0 10 1 Dhanushka Haputhanthri 6 0 0 9 0 Niladhar Rao 4 0 0 20 0 Lahiru Rathnayake 4 0 0 25 3
Intone Eagles Cricket ClubInnings  (target : 104 runs from 40.0 overs)       R B 4 6 Asif Mahmood Caught   sujay patel 4 0 0 0 Dhanushka Haputhanthri Run Out     1 0 0 0 Niladhar Rao LBW   Deepak Chauhan 28 0 0 0 Nagarjun Aleti Caught   sujay patel 6 0 0 0 Udaykumar a Munshi Caught   Deepak Chauhan 4 0 0 0 Lahiru Rathnayake Caught   harshal patel 8 0 0 0 Vishal Vikram Bowled   jigar k joshi 0 0 0 0 Murali Vijjapurapu LBW   harshal patel 2 0 0 0 Bala Devarajan Not Out     10 0 0 0 Shakthi Vijay Caught   Deepak Chauhan 1 0 0 0 Sreenath Nandyala Caught   jigar k joshi 14 0 0 0
Extras	(b 2, lb 2, w 15, nb 5)
Totals	(10 wickets in 33.0 overs) 102
FOW
Bowling O B M R W jigar k joshi 1 0 0 26 2 sujay patel 8 0 0 31 2 Jwalit Ray 2 0 0 7 0 Deepak Chauhan 8 0 4 9 3 harshal patel 8 0 2 20 2 Hassan A Dar 1 0 0 5 0