By FIRST DIVISION Match MIB V/S Max CC on 6th April @ Sano International ground 2.
Blooming Sakura & sun welcomed the players at SICG 2 on a pleasant Saturday but no one knew what the day had in store for both the teams. MIB, playing their first division 1 game after being promoted from division 2 last year, had high spirits as always but were up against the last year champions MAX CC team.
MIB Captain Gurdeep won the toss and elected to bat, having the desire to put runs on the board and Team Max under pressure. A new opening pair of Dixit & Abhishek took guard. Dixit found his groove but abhishek couldn’t find his touch and was sent back early courtesy some tight bowling from the new ball bowlers. Abhipray, too couldn’t trouble the opponent much. Next in, Sanket tried to upset the bowlers by playing his go to sweep and dab shots, got up to a fighting knock of 33 of 53 balls. Finally got out to play accross the line of the ball. The captain walked in and the body language told that it might be his day and so it was, barely a ball missing the middle of the bat and consistently upsetting the rhythm of the Bowlers by hitting 5 towering sixes in his outstanding performance of 55 runs from 49 balls. Small contributions from everyone lower down the order meant MIB Ended up at 218/10 with the last wicket falling on the last ball of the innings and ( inserts a joke ) Vikash Ranjan maintaining his superb record of staying not out in the end as always!
It was a satisfactory first half. 20 minutes break, and the boys took the field with 100% energy. Sarfraz and Vikash took the new cherry, bowled a few tight balls but to the oppositions opening batsmen’s credit, Kobayashi and Hanif, they put away the bad balls with ease maintaining the tempo MAX required to go over the line. MAX cruised to 52 for no loss but Sanket, the go to man for the captain didn’t disappoint. After his over as maiden, Hanif had smashed him for a boundary on the leg side. Sensing revenge, sanket bowled a same line but dragged the length back and hanif skied the ball to the safe hands of Abhipray resulting Max were 52/1. Supun entered like a thunderstorm and went away like a breeze smashing two beautiful sixes, a gem of a ball tossing up Supuns middle stump back atleast 10 yards. Hitesh was at it again. On the other hand Kobayashi nursing a hamstring injury still kept on going and was there till the score was 130/2 and max could sense something big. But in the middle overs, Thouseef and Hitesh wrecked havoc on the max middle order and they slumped to 130/2 to 183/9. It was a complete see saw battle. MIB thought it could be an amazing start to their season but they were forgetting its division one and nothing comes easy in here. The required run rate was a touch below 6. Panwar and hagihara were constantly getting the quick singles and the odd boundary. To their credit they were alert to sneak out runs every over but letting them steal those runs was not something we as a team were happy with.
Eventually 18 off the last 2 were required and 7 off the last over. The first ball of Vikash’s got smashed to the boundary and with that were smashed our hopes of winning the match which we could have closed out earlier with missed run out chance and sloppy fielding. 3 required of 5 came down to 1 required of 4, we were down on morale but everyone sensed just one dot ball could get them thinking differently. One dot, and another dot and it came down to 1 required of 2 and Hagihara could not keep his nerve and played an aerial shot towards short mid wicket but Patil leaped out of nowhere to grab onto the ball and end the match in a tie.
Both teams had to consolidate with two points each.
https://www.crichq.com/matches/738396/1st_innings
We take pride in the way we fought till the last ball of the match and not giving attitude that we had and we would like to congratulate Max CC for this beautiful game of cricket, they taught us it’s not over until it’s over, might be a big reason they won last year and wish them best of luck for the rest of season.
#bitgrit MVP for this match is Hitesh for his superb spell and contribution in every aspects. Thanks to our club sponsor bitgrit for their continuous support.
And not to forget, amidst all this, we had a lot of FUN on the ground.
Ciao ciao until the next game.
TEAM MIB 🏏
Report submitted by : Abhipray Dewan.
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