By Sanjeeb….
IECC won the toss and decided to bat first. The wicket offered good bounce and pace and IECC lost their first wicket in Masood the score reading only 6. But a superb 94 run 2nd wicket partnership between Santosh(35) and Dinesh(55) gave solid foundation to IECC’s innings. Both batsmen mixed caution with aggression and dominated Kytes attack.
However 3 wickets fell in quick succession; First Santosh was bit unlucky to be adjudged LBW, next Dinesh top edged a delivery,he could have easily dispatched to the boundary in another day. Anurag was next to fall trying to set a slower delivery into orbit.
Sanjeeb sensing danger went into a defensive mode and scored only in singles and occasional boundaries when he received a bad ball. However the fallen wickets had no effects on Raju and as soon as he joined Sanjeeb at the crease he dispatched three back to back sixes straight over the bowlers head. All of them being massive and landed deep inside the dry river. However Raju soon fell victim to an uneven bounce and had to depart.All other batsmen kept the scoreboard ticking and played freely while Sanjeeb made sure he holds one end till the very end. Some late big hitting by Harsha, Shailaj and Pankaj evetually took IECC to 260/8.
With bowlers like Anurag, Dinesh and Ganesh in their ranks IECC was pretty confident to defend this total. Pankaj and Sahilaj were trusted with the new ball, Pankaj bowled steadily and managed to remove Neil on his first over. Thanks to a superb catch at gully by Ganesh.Any body else would have certailnly dropped it, take my word for it. That catch went a long way lifting IECC’s moral and the fielding remained top class through out the inning.There were couple of runouts and Ganesh even bettered his last effort by taking another diving catch at gully which would have made Jhonty Rhodes proud.
However most of our bowlers, apart from Anurag and Dinesh, got little carried away, and bowled too many wides. Though it was a windy day and the CA ball is little hard to control it is no excuse for giving 43 wides and no balls in just 23 overs. That is almost 2 extra deliveries each over.Must commend Silvi for negotiating those bad deliveries, if he wasn’t a natural and someone with a long reach the extras would have looked even more ridiculous. Anurag was pick of the bowlers again and claimed 3/13 from his 5 overs.
Nevertheless this was a huge victory and will certainly do a lot of good to IECC’s run rate. And of course the victory was celebrated in Engineers traditional way, at the highway beer garden 🙂
Brief scorecard
IECC: 260/8 (40 overs) (Dinesh Singh 55, Sanjeeb Sahoo 52)
Kytes : 128/10 (23.4 overs) (Sukitha Halambage 30, Anurag Singh 3/13)
Here is a link to the scorecard