The first 20-20 game of the SCTCA season saw the newly formed Cheetah Cricket Club take on UBS. Several of UBS’ regular players had decided to automatically put the game under the win column and had taken the day off. This gave UBS the opportunity to expose several of their new comers to the conditions in an official league game.
Cheetah club won the toss and seeing that the pitch was soggy and damp, decided to bowl first and restrict UBS to a gettable total. Early on it seemed like the right call but eventually it did not matter that much to the outcome of the game. The regular openers for UBS showed up late owing to the fact that one of them had a sudden urge to gorge on a hearty breakfast. Unfortunately, the hearty breakfast did not matter much because the said individual could not get the ball beyond the 30 yard line.
UBS began proceeding with Alay and Akash Padhiyar. But disaster struck quickly as Alay was unlucky to get a ripper from Suresh Nair and had his stumps pegged back. One of the newcomers to the league, Virender went in next to the wicket and began ticking the board over with Akash. A juicy half volley caught the eye of akash and he decided to launch it beyond the fence but ended up hitting it to the safe hands of Atif Raza at Long off. Now it was upto the experienced players of UBS to steady the ship and put a decent target on the board. Bhavyen joined Virender and began putting the tattered pieces together. Suresh was bowling a decent line and length hence both batsman decided to see his spell off. They knew that the rest of the bowling attack could be capitalized on to put some runs on the board. This mindset was soon proven to be true as Virender and Bhavyen decided to free their arms and began picking up the scoring rate. The new comer opened everyone’s eyes by unfurling an array of strokes all over the field with equal amounts of power and touch. The running between the wickets by Bhavyen and Virender was also above par and was putting additional pressure on the fielding side. Virender soon brought up his maiden fifty by smacking a set of long balls in a row. The UBS bench was jumping for joy and the Cheetah camp was sulking from the assault. With the number of overs shrinking and the scoreboard bulging, Bhavyen lost his stumps trying to smack one out of the ground. Virender followed the same script and lost his wicket too but not before he had scored a mammoth 65 with 7 sixes to his account. Achal and Santosh then played out the remaining overs while ticking the scoreboard along and brought the total to a strong 155 at the end of 20.
Cheetah sent their openers with the mammoth ask of scoring at a brisk rate against a decent UBS bowling attack. Alay put an end to any of those ideas by pegging the stumps back of the batsmen without much on the board. He bowled a miserly line while also claiming the top 4 in the Cheetah batting order. He bowled his last over with the goal of claiming a 5 for but alas it would not come to fruition. Amit Bhagat was brought into the attack due to his personal “relationship” with many of the opposition’s players. He did not disappoint as he took 2 quick wickets and kept the runs in check. Santosh brought himself from the other end and bowled such a tight line that all of a sudden it felt like the T20 game was morphed into a test match that was to be saved on the final. With the final wicket dragging the game along the skipper decided to throw the ball to a special bowling talent that is only deployed in such special situations. Achal successfully completed the job that was asked of him and bowled the last batsman to put another game under the win column for UBS.
