Olympia 1 – VCC 3
Date & Venue; 7th May 2023, Olympia-Gouda
VCC 3 of 2023, is relatively a younger team composition that is ambitious and in sync with the youth development at the club.
VCC 3 team: Darryn, Sarath, Haris, Rajan, Jenagan, Tanveer, Pranav, Babette (wk), Rohit (C), Mohsen and Navjot. Ahsen was part of the playing XI, but his wife and life had other plans for today. They became parents to a lovely boy. Rajan came in at the 11th hour as a replacement.
Olympia won the toss and elected to field, VCC 3 would have also preferred to field first to understand the pitch/field situation.
Mohsen and Darryn went in as the opening pair. Mohsen started well with some fearless shots, Darryn was unfortunate to get out soon into this innings. Babette was in at no. 3 was out in quick succession (caught by keeper) while trying to chase a wide one. Mohsen was also caught at the slip soon thereafter. The score was 31 for 3 in 5.5 overs. Jenagan (at no. 4) and Rk (at no. 5) anchored the innings. The pitch behaved very erratically, and the slow grass field made it difficult to score off the bat. The 35 extras (31w, 1nb) from the opposition were the highest individual score for VCC. RK got out and the score was 100/4 in 19.4overs. It soon started to rain profusely with another spell expected in 2.5 hours. Both the team captains intended to get a match result and thus it was agreed to play a 22 over match. During the break, we ran the DLS calculations and concluded that any loss of wickets will have a larger impact on the target score compared with scoring the runs. Yet when we went out to bat for another 2.1 overs, we lost 3 more wickets. Jenagan was caught, followed by Rajan caught on the boundary off a very good hit, Tanveer got run out in the quest to squeeze out 1 more run.
VCC3 scored 117/7 in 22 overs and the target set for Olympia was 105 runs (DLS).
Sharath opened the spell along with Navjot at the other end. Sharath got the first breakthrough and Navjot followed to oust both the openers. Both bowled disciplined spells considering the wet field conditions and ended with a wicket each. The entire team was charged-up and got behind our bowlers. Tanveer came in as first change, a couple of chances were dropped to send the opposition captain to the dugout. The young team heavily relies on the captain’s (Sander) abilities. Tanveer took a bullet on his hand when he c&b Sander. The match was now more in our control. Pranav bowled from the other end and scalped a wicket. Tanveer completed his spell with 2 wickets. Rajan and Haris took to bowling. Although ball gripping was difficult, Haris did a nice job. Rajan was the pick of bowlers (2o, 8r,4w) as he bowled much fuller at the stumps to get 3 bowled. Olympia was bundled at 75 in 20overs.
As a captain, I am satisfied that individuals got the opportunity to contribute in one way or other and it is a good start to our campaign 2023.
VCC 3 won by 30 runs.
