Asteroids lose big to Tracy

Report by Asif Iqbal

Asteroids won the toss and elected to field on a wonderful day at Tracy. Tracy outfield looked quick and had 60 yards boundaries. Tracy opener Anoop started the day with 20 runs in the first over, smashing Pramod over the long-on boundary. Megharaj and Athul immediately put the brakes on Anoop and didn’t let him cut loose any more. Megharaj had him done very soon, cleaned bowled. Pramod came back strong bowling maiden over and taking next two wickets. He cleaned up the left hander Gurwinder when he was looking to get settled. In the next over, Pramod had Faraz cleaned bowled. Things looked really good for Asteroids at the end of the first break with Tracy score reading 69 for three in 15 overs.

Things started to go wrong for us starting from this time. Tracy batsmen Gulfam and Ghayoor came with a plan of not losing any more wickets in this session. Asteroids bowlers tried hard, but both the batsmen took time to settle down and started rotating the strike regularly. They were also helped by one lose ball in every over which was easily dispatched to the shorter boundaries. At the end of second session, Tracy was at 135 for three in 30 overs.

Tracy batsmen started the third session with a plan to score big in the remaining overs. In the process Ghayoor got out to Asif with Pramod taking a good high catch. This is when Taran came to bat and he started to take the game away from us. He was equally helped by many dropped catches and he ended up scoring a quick 72 runs with 5 fours and 5 sixes. Gulfam played the anchor role scoring 72 runs and he got run-out in the last ball of the 45th over. Tracy scoreboard read 241 runs for 5 wickets in 45 overs.

Asteroids was ready to start the innings with a confident of chasing the score, but things went wrong from ball one. Jimmy was unlucky to get an inside edge onto the stumps on the first ball of the innings giving Taran his first wicket. Abhishek and Athul tried to build a partnership and were looking good with one sixer each, but Sitesh got the better of them. Athul got out trying hard to cut Sitesh. Debutant Raj tried to get settled but was bowled by Oniel with score reading 46 for 4 wickets. Arun D and Rohan S tried to steady the innings and Asteroids were sitting at 60 for 4 in the first break.

We planned to do the same as Tracy by ensuring no more wicket loss till the second break, but heavy wind and good line and length bowling and sharp fielding from Tracy players stopped the run flow. Both the batsmen got out trying to up the score and we were at 89 for 6 wickets. The remaining batsmen got out with pretty ordinary batting and the team was bowled out for 121 in 33 overs. Akshay remained at 16 not-out. The whole innings had only 4 balls crossing the boundaries.

Pros – None

Cons – Team needs to up their performance in every department. Team-spirit needs to be up and fielders should back the bowlers. Top-order batsmen should take more responsibilities and get good scores.