Game 2 (Manzeer v/s Digant). When Batting fails..

In Digant we had a talented left-handed batsman, who incidentally is the youngest player in Logan. Captaining in his first major assignment, we were not sure what to expect. In contrast we had Manzeer, whom I have known for more than 2 years now. Manzeer takes preparation to another level, the batting order, fielding positions and player roles were clearly defined before the tournament. While other teams were testing their new players in the match itself, my captain(manzeer) had already taken a skill test and assigned duties.

As written in the previous post manzeer's team was considered to be the second strongest of the four. They had good batsmen in Nagendra(Nagy), Aditya, Ketan, Manzeer himself and the bowling too looked in great health with the discovery of another new talent Dayakar. Can utah state's best bowler Sandeep and the wily varma contain this lineup was the question on everyone's mind !!!

But it was not to be a batsman's day, batting first Digant's side could manage only 53 runs in 15 overs while losing 8 wickets in the process. Nagy was chokingly accurate giving nothing away in his 4 overs and Dayakar and Manzeer kept the pressure and variation from the other end. The collapse could be attributed to lack of confidence and match practice which led to pathetic shot selection from most of the batsmen, I would love to take credit for the 4 wickets that I took, but deep down I have to admit that not all were great deliveries..

Defending 54 on a concrete pitch looked impossible, but the match was brought to life by some spirited bowling from Digant's bowlers. Our formidable batting order folded like a pack of cards. Prateek, the boy from Meerut was another success story with his brand of fastish off-spin. In the end 53 was just not enough runs as we won the match in the 14th over. Not an ideal start, but we took the positives (our bowling) from the match and the all important points from the win....

Expected things had happened as expected and unexpected things lie ahead of all of us as hoped..