Thursday, February 25, 2010

Match Report: 02/20: vs Hawkes

This week the world of cricket witnessed a spectacular innings - an innings of a life time - from one of the most popular icons of cricket by any standard - Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. 200 not out in a One-Day game is something which does not come too often and every Indian would pray this record to stand still in time for years to come. Switching gears and coming back to the Cricbay where the Immortals breathe, live and die for their cricket, the past weekend witnessed yet another resilient effort by the team, who now has come to believe in the never-say-die quote till the end. The Immortals hosted the Hawkes for the Gold Cup Quarter Finals and witnessed some inspiring performances from their players on the field.

The toss was won by Hawkes and they put the Immortals to bat first (a very natural choice for the Immortals), but once again with the summer on the horizon the ground issues gave its first visit this season as a football game came up on CMS and the game was shifted to another ground. With rains all week, and a little bit of moisture on the pitch, expecting the unexpected was sure up for grabs and Hawkes bowlers did just that. They exploited the conditions quite well using the right areas on the pitch to their advantage, and from the word go, put the Immortals on their back foot. Both the openers, Nirmam and Viral, were sent home with the score reading 10 on the board. But what was to happen next was not at all on the cards, with two other batsmen, Jimmy and Darshil, getting out on successive balls, giving the bowler a chance to do a hat-trick. Aditya survived the hat-trick ball but eventually got out. The break was approaching and Ronak was stranded at the other hand quickly running out of partners.

Right after the break, one more wicket fell, and that brought Kapad (Kunjan) at the crease. With the score reading 26 for 6 the Immortals were surely up against the wall, but what came next literally blew the Hawkes off their feet and dented their confidence and the enthusiasm in a manner that their body language showed their dropped shoulders from ball one when they came out to bat. A literal blitz of one of its kind, Kapad took the attack back to the opposition as he smashed two huge sixes with least effort, one of which was up in the air for ages and as Sidhu would have said "That must have kissed the air hostess before coming down". Everyone from the Immortals were up on their feet, all charged up, cheering and pushing Kapad to play his part as Ronak on the other hand played a perfect sheet anchor roll playing till the end and clobbering one six of his own, a neatly timed shot over long on.

Ronak and Kapad were applauded for their respective heroic efforts, one for his extremely patient innings and holding the scoreboard together as people were falling all around him, and another one for his natural brisk run-a-ball quickfire innings, as the Immortals once again were pulled back up from the death hole as they put up 75 on the board, but more importantly shook the Hawkes so much so that none of their batsman managed to cross double figures. The highest their batsman could manage was 5 runs, as the Immortals strong bowling attack bundled them up for a mere 31 runs. To an extent that was the total runs (2 less) that Kapad scored in as much as many balls.

The bowlers did their part too quite well enough to restrict and pressurize the opponents. Some highlights being Bhupesh's 3 wickets, Keka's 3 wickets (with no extras), Ronak's fantastic catch behind the wickets (to which he literally did a Bhajji style dance all the way till the Hawkes dugout, just like Bhajji did all the way to the press box on winning the last test against SA), 2 wickets for the Captain Darshil, one each for Nirmam and Aditya.

Score Card

With this win, the Immortals are now onto their way to the Gold Cup Semi Finals against the Thunderdawgs.

Go Immortals
Cheers
Samy

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