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Buffs are Champions, Orchards runners-up, Denver Tigers bag 3rd place.
Tennis Cricket Match Summary Reports |
A tournament marred by bad weather all through, finally saw the end on May 23. The last day of the tournament saw the first game between Denver Tigers and Challengers to decide on the 3rd place.
Challengers won the toss and elected to bat. They scored 57 all out in 14.5 overrs. Ravi top-scored with 12 including 1 four and 1 six. Pratap took 4 wickets and also bowled a maiden. Indra took 2 wickets and Tarak and Amar one each. There was 1 run out.Raja took 3 catches behind the stumps. In reply, Denver Tigers scored 59 for 5 in 12.1 overs.Bharat top scored with 26 including 1 four. Mangesh, Ravi, Manoj, Venkat and Purresh took 1 wicket each for Challengers.
Bharath was declared Man of the Match for his 26 runs.
The match between Orchards and Buffs followed to decide the champions. Buffs and Orchards had met before in the 2nd match of the tournament. Orchards inflicted a heavy defeat on Buffs that time around by 22 runs and that was fresh in the minds of both teams. Orchards, to their credit, have been the most consistent side of the tournament by winning all their games running to the finals and were very confident of pulling up a victory. Buffs on the other hand, had a very bad start to the tournament with 2 defeats and had to win their last game in Round 1 against Kangaroos with a better runrate to have any chance of making it to the 2nd round. Both Buffs and Orchards had a good Round 2 winning both their games and thus making it to the finals.
Orchards won the toss and elected to bat first. Avinash and Imran opened the batting for Orchards but Buffs struck early with Imran getting out to a very good running catch by Pratik in the deep. Kunal and Avinash were picking up singles before Bharath struck in his first over getting Avinash caught behind. Soori and Kunal put up another good partnership before Soori was out caught in the deep by Sameed. Kunal was also dismissed soon again by an outfield catch by Bharath. The score read 42/4. Then came the best partnership for Orchards with Siddharth and Bunny coming together. Siddharth was holding up one end and Bunny was his usual self clearing the park with ease with 4 huge sixes. Naveen on the other end was bowling very well for Buffs continuously beating the batsmen with his pace and flight and was very unlucky not to get any wickets. The duo took Orchards to 84/4 in 13 overs and were looking to cut loose.Buffs needed a breakthrough. Kiran and Shravan bowled the 13th and 14th over mainly trying to remove the pace off the ball. The 14th over produced 2 wickets. Siddharth was out caught and bowled trying to accelerate and Mrugesh was run out 2nd ball by a direct hit. Sudeep then bowled a brilliant 15th over giving away just 2 runs and picking up a wicket. Bunny played all the way through getting run out off the last ball for a well made 30 off 13 balls. Orchards ended scoring 102/8 in 16 overs. A very defendable score considering the way Buffs chased the last time the two sides met.
Buffs started off their innings and needed a good opening partnership to build a solid foundation. And that is exactly what they got from Bharath and Naveen. Naveen was looking solid at one end and never looked like getting out. Bharath at the other end took the attack to the bowlers big time scoring at a fast clip.Siddharth and Kuldeep bowled good opening spells for Orchards. The real turnaround came in the 4th over when Bharath took Imarn for 12 runs in his first over. Both the Buffs’ openers continued and by the break Buffs were 54/0 in 8 overs. A perfect platform to launch an attack. In the first over of the break, Siddharth removed Bharath for a quick 36 off 27 balls.Siddharth bowled well right through and gave away just 18 runs off his 4 overs. Suresh walked in with confidence of a match winning innings against Warriors in the previous game. He along with Naveen kept picking up singles and got together a partnership of 20 runs before Naveen was run out. In walked Sudeep(MVP) to join Suresh. The equation read 27 runs off 24 balls at that stage.Sudeep brought down the equation to 16 off 18 balls with a huge six.With 15 required off 16 balls Suresh was run out and there were some flutters in the Buffs camp when Nutty walked out to join Sudeep. With 12 runs required off 12 balls, Nutty struck huge straight six off the first ball to bring it down to 6 off 11 balls and the result was pretty clear after that. With 3 runs required off 8 balls Sudeep struck a huge six to finish the innings and Buffs were the champions courtesy a convincing victory by 7 wickets with 7 balls to spare.
Man of the Match was Naveen Kaje for 23 runs and 4-0-9-0.
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