Result: Falcons won by 56 runs
The ground where match was played was the best ground we played on up till now. The pitch was nice and stable, boundaries were long and the ground was big. Falcons Innings We won the toss and elected to field. Vijay and Srinivas opened the bowling magnificently. The batting team was up to the task, defending and not losing their wickets. We got the first wicket in the 6th over. The bowling was beautiful and not letting the opposition score any easy runs, and the opposition was intent on preventing any loss of wickets. When break was taken after 12 overs, opposition had scored just 35 for 2. The opposition had set up a good base for acceleration in the next half of their innings. After the break, things started going wrong for CTCC. As the opposition looked to hit out any short pitched balls, our fielders started dropping catches in the deep. Some fielders felt the sun come in their eyes as they tried to judge the catches, others felt the tall grass restricted their movement, while others just felt they made judgement mistakes. The opposition really went in the attack mode after 20 overs as they had plenty of wickets in hand and finished with a total 119. The last 13 overs had produced 84 runs. We dropped more than 10 catches in all. While our ground fielding was decent, our ariel fielding was woeful. CTCC Innings CTCC started their run chase with Amit Jain and Chandra. Both the openers were batting for the first time in the league. By the third over, both the openers were back in the pavilion. Chandra had been bowled and Amit Jain edged a catch to the keeper. Kapil and Abhay tried to slow down the momentum gained by the opposition, but they didn’t last long. Kapil was bowled by Hari, while Abhay was caught at square leg. Satish came to the crease and was joined by Amit. Satish defended his way, but on one occasion exposed his leg stump to get bowled. Neeraj joined Amit at the crease. Shortly, Amit lost his wicket. With less than 30 runs on the board, the tail had been exposed.Sumit joined Neeraj and both the players played sensible cricket – defending initially and opening up later. Neeraj got a long hop that he played on to the stumps. Sanjay joined Sumit but could not last long. The whole team was bundled out for 63 with a heavy margin of defeat. The gains from this match: 1.Neeraj and Sumit’s partnership showed the way to the others. Neeraj’s comeback to the form is exciting. He seemed to enjoy batting down the order. 2.The bowling was very good. Very few extras were given. The bowlers started the match superbly, in particular. And it is admirable that even when catches were being dropped all across the ground, the bowlers did not lose their way and bowled well. The Areas of improvement from the match: 1.Dropped catches. The number of dropped catched is shocking. At times, the fielder moved too slowly, other times the balls “came from the sun”, at other times the tall grass restricted the movement of the fielders. Admittedly, the catching of the opposition was equally bad, if not worse, but it over compensated for it with its batting. There is a need for us to practice high catches in the deep. 2.Batting of the top order and the middle order: It will be a stretch for any team to win a match when its batting is not clicking, as it is with CTCC. One hopes that the poor batting performance on the whole, is not due to lack of application but due to lack of practice and this will be worked on. The batsmen need to sort out their problems and communicate to the captain. Hopefully, some shuffling of the batting order will produce more performances like Neeraj’s and Sumit’s today. There is a need for quality batting practice in match situation. 3.Ability to bounce back. Once catches started getting dropped, there was a sudden change in the demeanor of the players - the shoulders dropped, the cheering grew softer, the spirit dampened….and more catches were dropped !!! To qualify, we need to bounce back from small setbacks together. Today’s performance could have been in part because of the fact that the team was playing together for the first time today. The learning from this experience is that the eleven players should be identified early and should spend some time together to gel together. 4.Twelve players turned up to play for our team and there was confusion regarding the playing eleven before the match started. One of the players had to go without playing. (We let the history repeat itself.) Communication problems within the team need to be worked on. 5.The team needs to get some equipments. There is a severe shortage of balls and we need atleast two good bats. 6.There is a need for some players to improve their running between the wickets. The calling has to be better and clearer. While there were no casualties to this in today’s match, we have to become better at it to qualify. 7.There was a case in today’s match where one player felt that his position in the batting order did not do justice to his abilities and the team. There is a need for the organizing committee to communicate to all players their roles (batting, bowling, and fielding) before every match. This will avoid such surprises, while preparing all players adequately of what is expected of them. Let us work on these to become better prepared to qualify. We will not stop short and do what it takes to achieve our goal. We play the favorites in the next match and we have got three weeks to prepare ourselves for that match. Let us organize ourselves and show them what we can do !!! We shall prevail.
Comment of the match : "Yaar Yarram ne catch pakad liya, warna jeet to hum gaye they - Amit"