Allround Performance by the Engineers bring good result

Bidyut Sarkar,
28 September, 2014

The Engineers registered yet another convincing win in KCL, this time over AlphaQ, and confirmed their place in the final already with two matches to spare.

Winning the toss, AlphaQ decided to bat first. But their hope to score big got buried under a spotless bowling performance by the Engineers. The opening bowlers, Biju Paul and Rajneesh Shukla, started with probing line and created early discomfort for AlphaQ batsmen. The first success came in the 5th over when Biju bowled Nilesh for 6. There was no turning back from there for Engineers as they kept taking wickets at regular intervals. After top the order failed to score, AlphaQ concentrated on occupying the crease rather than scoring which was a sensible thing to do at that time. With the bowlers not giving any extras (till it was jinxed by Biju’s comment in 11th over ‘aaj ek bhi extra nahi gaya!’, followed by a couple of wides) runs were hard to come by. Biju bowled six overs on the trot and returned with the figure of 2/15. While, Rajneesh settled for 1/6 in four overs. The change bowlers Manvi and Anurag also bowled well. While Manvi was economical (7 runs off 5 overs), Anurag bowled with some fierce pace. Well, the smart bowling changes and excellent field placements from the captain Vinay also helped their cause. The Engineers spinners, Bidyut (2/19) and Prashant (1/7), also didn’t return empty handed. AlphaQ’s “Mr. dependable” opener Chandru (12 runs in 50+ balls), after playing for 22 overs got out to a soft dismissal to Bidyut. With the tail exposed Vinay decided to bring back Anurag for another spell. The raw pace from Anurag left the batsmen with the option of either saving their wicket or their ……(fill in the blanks!). The result was that the AlphaQ innings folded very quickly for 75. Anurug was pick of the bowlers with 3/10 in five overs. Even with just one AlphaQ batsman scoring 2 digit runs, they somehow managed to reach 75, a score worth giving a fight.

Well, the start to the batting the Engineers batting was not so fairy tale like. Two wickets fell in the first over itself. Atul got a fine nick to the keeper, while Abdul unfortunately got run out in a misunderstanding with the bowler (bowler !!??). Yes, bowler it is. As he went to listen to something the bowler was saying to him without grounding the bat (well, the ball was not dead), their fielder knocked the wickets down. Dinesh also fell cheaply and the score of the Engineers was 19 for the loss of 3 wickets in 5 overs. The other opener Ashok and the Engineers captain ‘cool’ Vinay lifted game from there. Both played some wonderful, eye-popping strokes and scoring briskly. With a win within sight, the Engineers slumped again. After Ashok’s departure the Engineers lost another two quick wickets (of Manvi and Anurag) and were reduced to 52 for 6. Possibly, for first time in the game AlphaQ could think that they can snatch the game away from the Engineers. But, Vinay had other plans. With debutant Bidyut’s (this writer) support, Vinay made sure no further hiccups happen. Vinay played a match winning “captain’s innings” (31 n.o.). Other notable contribution came from Ashoke (18 runs).

With this win the Engineers booked their place in the final. This makes the remaining two group matches against Indian Tigers mere courtesy matches.

Gurdeep Dua
Sept 14, 2014

Winning the toss and elected to bat was the decision from our captain. I know, hey did it matter ? Actually, saw the scorecard and IECC were put to bat first. Whatever.. The plan from Serendib was to put pressure on our batting line up and chase up the small total. They started off very well with superb bowling attack and dismissing our star openers Atul and Ashok cheaply.

This brought our Mr. Dependable Dinesh on the crease which started off very brilliantly and hitting a boundary. He gave the momentum to scoring but got busted soon and blamed our respected and Mr. Nice Rajneesh for giving him LBW for the “first apeal” in his words ;). Score was very bad and IECC were struggling at 39 for 3 in 10 overs. But as the clouds were protecting us from Sunshine, Karthik (calling Karthik, which is another off field sparkling topic which was entertaining our 40+ Biju-San, Mr cool Abdul, Mr Geographical and Historical Pavethy and Charming Guru

Together they had partnership of 60 odd runs with Karthik scored superb 19 runs and Manvi fell 5 runs short of half century for his match winning innings. Once, Manvi was out batting saw a collapse again before Mr. Cool scored a 25 balls 29 runs knock and making sure team reaches to 167 runs. Rajneesh supported him with brisk 7 runs and hitting a boundary. That brings us to the end of our batting innings on the field but there was another story cooking off field. You wanna know? Come to ground next time.

It’s too lengthy and now should I write for our superb balling performance as well? Jo vada kiya woh nibhana padega, aaye jitni bhi neend humko likhna padega.

Ok ok, aur nhi bore karoonga. Here you go.

Bowling was started by Rajneesh not giving any runs from Bat ( yeah nothing from Bat) but Biju took the first wicket by being a crook. He dropped their best batsman of Rajneesh but forced Rajneesh to take the catch of Biju’s bowling in the very next over. Smarty and Naughty was Biju-San on that day. May be the naughtiness forced him to become smart. Yes, you impressed them Biju-San. Jokes apart Biju-San tried to took much more difficult catch and did put splended effort in taking the catch.

Every bowler who came in kept taking wickets while our Nozomi express had other plans of injuring the batsman. Anurag kept on bowling at consistent 135+ and always kept Serendib batsman at back foot. He managed the troops very well. One thing I learned was that during innings break he made very clear that don’t change field as per your convenience, but approach him to get it changed. This helped a lot in cutting nuisance and the team operated smoothly. I have booked mark this tactics and will be using myself, yeah yeah some of you know it very well. Let’s confine. Everything was going well before Sarendip players stuck in between and denying their wickets. All IECC members wanted to have party from Nozomi express being the captain and he kept saying only if you bowl them out now. Again, Karthik raised his hands and asked for bowling.

” Anurag ne kulhari pe pair rakh diya tha. ”

Karthik made Sure Anurag ends up paying the bill by taking 3 wickets in his only over and bowled Sarendip out under 40 runs.

Hurrraayyyy.

“aaj hum Jeet gaye”.

Guys, humble request to change the team slogan please. May be better to start a poll. People can choose “Aaj hume jeetna hai” or can propose new one please.

Chalo ab saare so jao taki kal Kaam pe ja paao. Last but not the least , thanks to Biju-San, Anurag and Karthik for the post match treat at 7/11.

Three cheers for MOM Manvi For scoring 45 runs.

By Atul Joshi A walkover handed out by Serendib for the KCL match in the previous week left the Engineers with no match practice before this tournament match.

Taking initiative to start a first ever tennis ball based T-20 tournament in Tokyo the Engineers could not afford to lose the first match of their own tournament. The response to roll call to form a team was lukewarm though, with only 7 players available until the day before the match but by Sunday night the Engineers were able to find an eleven. Phew..!! For the T-20 tournament, the Engineers renamed themselves IECC Maestros.

Late evening shower in Tokyo on the eve of the match had the newly laid pitch completely under water and the match looked doubtful. With the chance of play grim at the regular ground, IBS did manage to find a playing field on the extreme far side of the actual ground.Under the hot sun and a sticky humid weather, IBS won the toss and decided to bat first. In the absence of both the regular captain and vice-captain, the young and dynamic Anurag Singh led the Engineers. The IBS openers started cautiously against the opening attack of Biju and Karthik. With single and a occasional boundary the score was steady with an run rate of 8 after 4 hours. Anurag started making bowling changes with short spells which starting giving results as IBS lost 3 wickets for 13 runs before they reached 50. The fall of wickets brought the 2 of their best batsmen, Unni Krishnan and Paul Pauly, on the crease and they didn’t disappoint their captain, adding a 50+ partnership in 4 overs which included an over by Jagan Panda that conceded 26 runs. Both batsmen found the midwicket area very useful to score runs. With the score crossing the 100 mark in the 11 overs total of 200 was on the cards, but Abdul Satar had other ideas and came up with a excellent spell of fast and accurate bowling. Abdul took 3 wickets and was also involved in 2 great close catches which saw IBS collapse from 119/4 to 129 all out. Abdul was the standout performer for the Engineers equally well supported by Pavethy Nath who bowled a steady line and length. His consistency gave him a return of 6/12 in 4 overs. What at one point looked like would be a big chase for the Engineers was brought down to manageable one by these two bowlers aided equally by the fielders and a fair bit of intelligent captaincy. A lot of singles were denied by sharp fielding and good catches in the outfield. Paul Pauly was the star batsman for the IBS with 47 runs with a strike rate of more than 100%. He was quick to latch on to anything short or over pitched, which were plenty, and most of them disappeared over the boundary line. Without his contribution the score wouldn’t have been competitive.

The target was not a huge one but the Engineers are known for doing things unpredictable. Sanman Koyande and this writer went out to chase but Sanman got out in the very first over trying to score from the first ball. This caused a bit of nervousness in the camp. Kartik and Atul tried to play cautiously with 1s and 2s without taking any risk. Kathik too fell soon but not before forcing a few drives. With score standing at 29/3 after 7 overs the required rate was almost 8. Atul tried to lift the run rate and succeeded with couple of hits but lost his wicket when he was caught on the boundary. That brought in stand-in captain Anurag to the crease with score at 54/4 after 10 overs and with Pavethy at the other end batted sensibly for the next 4 overs without losing any more wickets. With asking rate touching 9.5 with only 5 overs left the batsmen decided to change gear and hit few lusty blows. With IBS running out of bowling options, both Anurag and Pavethy batted in tandem to dispatch bad balls over the rope a few times. One particular over by one of their bowlers saw 6 wides being bowled. Anurag got out trying to hit but till then the required run-rate was brought down to 7. Pavethy continued to rotate strike with Shanmugham and with the target in touching distance, Shanmugham played a Dhoni look-like wining shot to clear the long off boundary with a 6.

Having seen batting collapses for most of the last season, this was a good performance by the batters. Most of the top 6 spend some time in the middle and the chase never look out of reach. The win should give the Engineers a lot of confident for the rest of the season.

• Brief scores:
• IBS: 128 (16.3 ov.) Paul Pauly 47, Pavethy Nath 6/12, Abdul Sattar 3/24
• IECC Maestros: 129/6 (18 ov.). Anurag Singh 29, Pavethy Nath 22*.