Cleveland 1 come thru in close game

Rakesh S.r

Once again I lost the toss and they invited us to bat first. The ground was a bit damp so it made sense as the ball will not travel much. Fortunately Patrick had brought his lawn mower which was used to trim some of the tall grass around the pitch. Ravi N. and Ravi P. opened the innings for us. Whereas Ravi N. was a bit subued, Ravi P. went after the bowling early. Had some good shots but then ended up miscuing one straight to the fielder. ~15/1 in 4. Ani went in next. Ravi and Ani steadied things a bit. But a mixup saw Ravi N being run out on a no-ball. Patrick went in next and had some good blows. There was not much in the bowling. That got Ani excited and he ended up lossing his wicket to a full toss. Another mixup got Patrick runout. Wickets kept falling at regular intervals with us being around 90/7 at the 20 overs. Then Prasad and Sunny put up a good partnership. Another mixup in the end saw us all out for 152 in 31.3 overs. Not a very good total considering the bowling we faced. Prasad 40, Sunny and patrick 20-25, Ravi P., Ravi N., Ani, Richard and Balaji 10-15 were the main scorers for CCC.

Prasad and Ani opened the bowling. Both bowled good spells. Ani was first to strike with an exceptional catch off his own bowling. A full blooded shot by the batsman going towards the round the wicket rununp about 1 foot above the ground. Ani in his follow through went into a rolling dive caught the ball one handed. Despite some good bowling by both Ani and Prasad, no further damage was done. Although, they were not scoring much either. This was to some extent rectified by their umpire who was extremely generous on wides. A brief interlude followed because of our objections to their wide calls with rule book being brought onto the field. Things improved a bit from then on in terms of wide calls but LBW was another matter that saw several of our bowlers getting frustrated.

Richard was next to strike to another piece of exceptional catching off his own bowling, although it may just have been a reflex catch :-). They did not venture to hit us out of the park but kept taking singles and twos. These coupled with wides kept them in the game. Sundeep came on to bowl replacing Richard and struck quickly. He tooke the prize wicket of Sohail. At one stage he was up for a hatrick, narrowly missing it as the ball fell short and wide of Sunny in the slips. From then on their 6th wicket partnership threatened to take the game away from us by some exceptional running between the wickets almost suicidal at times. At this point we started falling apart by some unwanted shies at the stumps resulting in over throws. Finally, the equation came down to 19 runs in 18 balls with 3 wickets in hand. Prasad and Patrick bowled the next two tight overs - 9 runs for 1 wicket leaving them to score 10 off the last over with 2 wickets in hand. Brought back some old memories. Off the very first ball from Prasad, things got very testy as the square leg umpire called it a no ball. Several words were exchanged by an enraged fielding side. Unfortunately some perosnal
comments were also made from our side. After several minutes, as the ump refused to call the no-ball back we resumed our last over as no other option was available. Prasad managed to get one LBW in that over, a dropped catch and a run out off the 5th ball brought the last over to close with CCC winning by 6 runs. Sandeep 3, Prasad 2, Patrick, Ani, Richard and Rakesh 1 were the wicket takers with one run out.

Overall the bowling was good, batting and fielding were OK. Took some exceptional catches but cracked under pressure.