Report by Nachi
Intense match… but didn’t go Blazers way
Blazers started things of with a positive attitude. Tejas won the toss and elected to bat. Natty and Anoop senior started things off for blazers. It was a chilly morning and the ball was moving quite a bit. Specially Umair was doing a great job controlling the swing. Anoop started positively but fell shortly for a great diving catch by the keeper. Anoop Gunturi did not last long and fell shortly as well. Sparshith Joined Natty who had already timed a few shots. They put along a good 40 run partnership and saw us through the first session. The Second session did not start well with Sparry getting a peach of an in-swinging yorker. Tejas fell soon after mistiming trying to clear covers. Nachi joined Natty and both started to steady the ship. Both of them played through the second session and the score stood at 92/4 at 34 overs. The plan was simple, get 3-4 an over for the next 10 overs and then up the scoring for the last 5 overs. Things seemed to go well with a 50 run partnership at the 38th over. But soon after Natty fell for a sharp catch at short cover after a well made 60. Nachi was caught soon after at deep cover. Vijay played really well at the tail end of the innings along with Kiran and Shashank to get the total closer of 150. At the end of it we fell short by about 25 runs.
The second innings started perfectly for blazers. Vijay and Kiran were right on the money. Vijay struck first in the 5th over and Kiran soon after to put the pressure right back on Aces. They were 20/2 at the end of 10 overs. Rutvij was brought into the attack. Well… no words can do justice to the effort he put. He bowled his heart out and was unplayable. He should have had 3-4 wickets had the fielding backed him up. Aces saw of the first session at 29/2 at 17 overs after a few dropped chances. Second session belonged to the Aces while they played cautiously. A couple more dropped chances didn’t help the Blazers either. Never the less the bowling unit was always on top of things and kept a tight lid on scoring. At the end of second session, Aces needed 54 runs of 16 overs and 8 wickets in hand. Blazers were still in the game and a few wickets change things. The third session saw Blazers plug the runs by allowing on 6 runs of the first 4 overs. This saw Aces taking a few risks and soon Karthik was out to a sharp catch by Abhishek and Rutvij finally got a well deserved wicket. Although scoring was not easy we had to take wickets. Just when we thought the game was on, a couple more chances went down. Although we had scoring in check Aces had the wickets in had to take a few risks that paid off. Finally they needed 18 runs of 4 overs, down to 13 runs of 3 overs and finally chased it in the 49th over.
A shout out to all the seamers, Vijay, Kiran, Rutvij, Anoop and Natty for making this a close game. This is again one of those games that we could have won.
So close yet so far…
Sunnyvale Cricket Club 