In the first playoff game against a Div3 team, JECC batted first and were all out for 100 runs in 31.4 overs.
Sluggers easily scored the runs in 17.2 overs losing only 2 wickets.
It was a humiliating and depressing loss in an otherwise splendid season for us as a team. We didn't mind losing after putting up a fight, but this game was as if we didn't show up. Utter batting failure as a team led to the worst loss in the year.
Scorecard: http://www.dreamcricket.com/clnj/scorecarddisplay.aspx?gameid=8849
Batting: We lost the toss but were put into bat, which we wanted to do anyway. Our game plan without a few of the core players was to put up 150-180 runs which was a good score on our ground.
Ravi and Dhanu went about the task in a very focused manner and put up 44 runs in 14 overs cautiously. After that we kept losing wickets very quickly to put pressure on ourselves. Only Chinmay managed double digits and rest of us read like binary codes - four ducks! Two run outs in terrible mixup's didn't help the cause either and we folded out to 100 runs like a pack of cards.
Bowling: We needed a few wickets to get some pressure and all our bowlers bowled their heart out, maybe tried a little too hard too causing to leak extras. Their batsmen played very well and played some attacking shots. Chinmay was the only bowler to get a couple of wickets with two very good deliveries but their batsmen played positively and chased down the score easily.
Extras (26) were the highest scorer in their team. We always had issues with extras this season, especially wides and this came back to bite us at the worst possible time this season.
I couldn't understand why we performed like this. Agreed that the sluggers got their best team and bowled really well, but our batsmen are very talented to cope up with this. They didn't even bowl spinners who we are vulnerable against.
This one will be a tough loss to swallow, but we also have T20's coming up soon, which would be a less pressure match situation. Let's try to focus on them and come back strong next year..
