With little drizzle and overnight dew and light showers, the non-seasonal clouds brought up a little worry to the Immortals as they hosted Wisden CC over the past weekend. These teams had never met before, and with the game shifting to Washington Park in Mountain View, it was yet another day for some good cricket and more importantly a W on the board.
The toss was won by the Immortals captain, Darshil, and the choice was to promptly bat first on what was to be a batting platter with the moist hardening the pitch quite well. It looked as if it would be a run fiesta. A day when everyone contributed their best in some way or the other the Immortals were on their way with a stomping win.
Immortals batting had never looked so much better with everyone chipping their best as the top order fired the right cylinders from ball one helped with some haywire bowling from Wisden. With the odd extras coming every over, the Immortals were cruising at one poing with 30 runs off 6 overs. A flurry of boundaries from Ronak and Jainip, just added to the total which was well set up by the openers Nirmam and Sanato (Viral) at the top. With some exquisite shots from Batti (Karan SJSU) it looked like 100 were surely up for the grabs off the 20 overs. But with some well disciplined bowling towards the end by Wisden, restricted the Immortals bandwagon on 89 runs for the loss of just 5 wickets.
If the batting cage was happy about their performances, the bowlers of Immortals were not to be left behind. I wonder if someone has ever known, observed or recorded the kind of bowling we inflict upon the opponents, such a way, that this time there were 5 ducks in the Wisden CC batting card. If we look back upon the previous scorecards I think they speak up for themselves as to how accurate, ferrocious, aggressive yet well balanced the Immortals bowling aspect is. All the bowlers got their piece of the meat here and there, as the Wisden CC batting just collapsed like a deck of cards with no one showing determination to occupy the crease.
With only one batsman of Wisden CC reaching double figures, the game was well over at the 10 over break, but to add to the misery of their batsman and to haunt them, one highlight that stood out was Jaishal's only over that he bowled. The first ball, was well knicked and a fantastic catch was held by the keeper Ronak. The second ball (Jaishal did mention on the fly that the batsman is not at all showing any stumps), and somehow he managed to uproot his furniture as the batsman was yorked and the bails flew by the keeper. Third ball - which meant Jaishal was on a hattrick, and the captain rightly closed in all the fielders to pressurize the batsman, and a little wide and the batsman thought of coming down the crease to drive it, only to fall short of his crease, as the ball went past him and Ronak made no mistake in flicking the bails to stump him out. What a over !!! It was the final nail in the coffin as Wisden CC were wrapped up for 35.
The Immortals now are second in their group right behind Mavericks at 10 points. With yet another win against the upcoming game against GSCC, the Immortals are surely on their way to qualify for the Platinum/Gold.
Go Immortals
Samy
Life's first Hatrick :)
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