Date: 18th Jun 2023
Venue: VCC Ground 1
Team: Rohit(c),Naman, Ahsen, Jenagan, Tanveer (wk), Pranav, Haris, Mohsen, Amrit, Navjot, Sarath , Kashif (12th man)
Another sunny weekend, another Sunday afternoon and it’s time for VCC 3 to compete against
Qui Vive 4 in their home ground. Coming off a clinical win against Sparta 2, VCC 3 was motivated and geared up to keep the winning momentum going.
Rk missed his favorite coin he uses for coin toss and we were put in to bat first after losing the toss, VCC 3 batsmen had the job on their hands to put up a competitive score on the board. Tanveer and Jenagan opened the innings and as expected Tanveer went against the opening bowlers made a quick fire 22 (13) before he got caught off the keeper chasing the wide delivery. Naman went next and joined Jena to put up 100+ partnership which had some eye-catching cover drives from Naman and Jena on other end played calm and composed innings to hold one end up. Naman perished while trying to up the run rate and Jenagan soon followed. Having lost 2 set batsmen VCC 3 had to rebuild the innings again. Mohsen and Amrit did that with attacking cricket to put the opposition on backfoot. Amrit played the role of aggressor and was well supported by Mohsen during that partnership with lot of boundaries. As a result of this partnership things were looking good to post a 280+ score but an unfortunate run out of Amrit resulted in a mini collapse where VCC lost 3 quick wickets for 19 runs which also slowed down the run rate. Rohit and Haris played out the final overs which had lot of running (with this we hope Jenagan concedes Rk is a better runner) and some boundaries through which VC C3 posted a competitive total of 258/7 at the end of 40 overs. Naman (55 of 58), Amrit (34 of 21), Jenagan (60 of 86), Mohsen (27 of 32) had a good outing with the bat.
Confident of their own bowling lineup, VCC 3 took the field hoping to defend target with ease. They were in for a surprise as the opening batsmen of Qui Vive 4 scored at brisk rate with timely boundaries. Opening bowlers (Sarath and Navjot) didn’t get the start as they hoped for, but the first breakthrough came with a brilliant direct hit from Naman which was followed by a brilliant delivery from Pranav to get rid of the other opener in the same over.
Pranav bowled a brilliant spell as a first change bowler and ended up with 2 wickets in his first spell. Ahsen, Pranav, Jenagan and Amrit bowled the middle overs which resulted in regular wickets, but the Qui Vive kept the required run rate in control. Pranav finished his spell with 3 wickets, and it was up to the other bowlers to finish off the game. Just when things were looking tense and the game heading towards a close finish, important breakthrough was provided by Ahsen who got the wicket of their set batsmen Sunny (62 of 59 balls) supported by Naman with his calm and composed catching. Kashif was very kind to come over to support us and RK’s intuition worked well that we might end up needing 12th man help. He fielded for RK due to a muscle cramp, and he was sharp in the outfield.
After the crucial wicket, final overs were bowled by Ahsen, Sarath and Jenagan who closed the Qui Vive innings with disciplined bowling. Qui vive was all out for 229 in 38 overs. VCC 3 won by 29 runs and the pick of the bowlers were Pranav (3/35) and Jenagan (4/39).
This win was due to complete team effort and entire team recognized that in post-match discussion. Areas of improvements out of this game is running between the wickets and converting the dot ball percentage which we as a team aligned to achieve it together in upcoming matches.
