CCC1 Makes a good start to Midwest 2003 Tournament

Rakesh S.

Team 1 played against CSU and easily beat them. I lost the toss and
they decided to bat first. Prasad and Gautam opened the bowling.
Despite good bowling by them neither got any wicket in the first 8-9
overs. First wicket to fall was a run out by some good fielding by
kaushal Patel, I believe. Then Gautam and Sundeep got a couple of more
wickets. At the break (18 overs), they had scored 60/4. The next pair
then resisted some more but their scoring rate never got over 3-4 runs
an over. Some good bowling by Patrick and Ani got a few more wickets to
fall with Prasad taking the last wicket caught by Gautam at long on - a
spectacular one handed catch to a well hit ball that threatened to sail
over his head. CSU's innings closed with 133 in 34.1 overs. To the
credit of CSU, their umpiring was extremely fair, 3 LBWs, 2 runs outs
and one caught behind tells you the story. Granted, they were all outs
but no other team in my opinion would have given all of those outs.
Wickets were shared by Patrick, Ani, Sundeep, Prasad and Gautam with 2
run outs.

Our chase started with Ravi and Gautam. First 5-6 overs saw a whole
bunch of swings and misses, edges flying to deep third man, catches
dropping just out of the reach and so on. However, CSU's bowling was
really wayward. Of the first 25 runs only 4-5 were scored by the bat.
All other were extras. Finally both gautam and Ravi decided enough was
enough and got into scoring with pulls, hoiks and drives. Gautam in one
over got 4,6,6 off three consecutive balls. Runs were coming at a
steady pace at this point. Ani being padded up started wondering will
he get a chance to bat or not. We crossed 100 around the 14th over. By
now Ani had given up all hope and was just praying he doesn't have to
go in with 1 run left to score. I guess he did not pray hard enough.
With scores tied at 133, Gautam got out (52), Ani went in with
instructions to give Ravi a strike as Ravi was on 48. Poor Ani, didn't
get to put bat to ball as the bowler obliged by bowling a wide. We won
the game in 22-23 overs.