Match Report :: vs Hulks :: 03/27

The summer has begun in the beautiful Northern California, offering some great picturesque backdrops, especially when you are playing on the Cupertino Middle School (CMS) ground and facing the bowler running up to you. The Immortals began their Regular Season 2010 by playing the Hulks for the first head-to-head matchup this past Saturday. The Immortals were visiting the Hulks on their home ground at Mary and Remington, but come summer it was an inevitable fact that the ground issues would pop more often than your buttered corn in your microwave.

The Immortals have made all their efforts for the past 3 seasons to be a well disciplined, nicely organized and punctual camp, bringing out the professionalism in each of their individual player, but the outfit that they were facing were not quite up to the task, or shall we say were not up and running from their beds. What shocked the Immortals was that none of the players of the opposite team were on their home ground by the scheduled time, and to add to it, when the game was shifted to the Immortals home ground at CMS, it seemed as if the Hulks were in the mood of playing just the Little League of Cricket as they could not manage even 9 players till 9 am and were left scurrying for players to even qualify to play the game as per the rules.

The Hulks did finally manage to get their 9 acts together (but still 2 short), and the toss was done which went in the Immortals favor as they chose to bat first. No penalties were enforced by the Immortals upon the Hulks as the game was set for a full quota of 20 overs a side.

The Immortals Team: Viral, Nirmam, Karan (SJSU), Ronak, Jimmy, Aditya, Jainip, Darshil, Gaurav, Jaishal, Bhupesh

The Hulks Team: Simran, Aravinth, Srinivasan, Amol, Sujit, Karthik, Anvesh, Anand, Alhad

Batting first, the Immortals message was clear, to take advantage of the home ground and a bigger advantage of having only 9 players from the opposition and thus score big. But things did not go as planned as the first 3 wickets became victims of what were supposed to be well-timed shots but resulting into unlucky but well-held catches by the Hulks players.

But the next pair of Ronak and Jimmy batted quite superbly well to keep the scoreboard ticking, and with some wayward bowling from the Hulks resulting into a lot of extras, the Immortals were comfortably on their way towards a big total. Jimmy was back to his natural best as he played some exquisite strokes hitting 3 boundaries in his knock as he scored a brisk 31 off just 39 balls with Ronak and Aditya chipping in with valuable contributions in the middle order.

The Immortals did lose momentum towards the end of the innings with their lower order as Hulks managed to choke them a little with some good line and length bowling leaking no free runs as they managed to skittle the Immortals all out for 88 runs.

The huddle before the start of the bowling for the Immortals was about crushing the opponents to take advantage of the DRR. With two players short on the Hulks lineup, the task was going to be much easier for the Immortals as Bhupesh struck twice in his spell in the beginning to push the Hulks on the back foot. But what came next was quite unexpected and maybe something worth experiencing in a game of cricket. There is no better sight in this gentlemen's game than a bowler taking 3 wickets off 3 successive balls - a Hat-trick !

Ronak, the Immortals keeper was handed the ball after the Hulks managed to scamper to 23 odd runs with only 10 coming off the bat, and the Immortals leaking 13 extras in a span of just 6 overs. So Ronak started off his first over with 3 dot balls as he maintained an excellent line and length frustrating the Hulks batsman, and on the 4th ball Ronak got his first victim, completely bowling the batsman all over. The next batsman came in, took his guard, the Immortals all charged up, Ronak comes in bowling almost a similar delivery as the previous one, and the batsman had no clue as it went past through him and uprooted his furniture. 2 wickets in 2 balls and one delivery left.

Ronak was on a hat-trick and the Immortals were in the middle of a historic moment which would go down into the record books forever. The fielders were brought in to put pressure on the next batsman and there was pin drop silence (the silence before the storm), as Ronak went back to his mark, turned around, came charging in and hit the deck at the right spot as the batsman was left baffled, as he saw the ball rush past him onto his stumps and off went the bails, and off went the Immortals sparking off celebrations as everyone closed in on Ronak applauding his Hat-trick effort as the over read: * * * W W W

What a feat by Ronak as the Immortals finally closed the deal by dismantling the Hulks for 28 runs in 10 overs and taking 4 points under their belt.

Score Card

With this win, the Immortals now host GSCC at CMS on 4/3.

Go Immortals

Samy

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