ANZACs vs PACC
The Anzacs
were faced with the happy task of playing a team that had just
defeated the reigning MACC champs. We were greeted with yet another
flicx
pitch and a damp outfield to boot. Winning the toss would be crucial
and
Simon responded in fine style by losing it. Long story short, Parth and
Sundar found themselves in the middle. Parth went first over, paying
the
price for playing a lazy defensive shot. Sundar kicked off the first of
many
Anzacs run outs by…..getting run out, of course! Satbir and Panda
stabilized
the innings somewhat till Satbir was trapped plumb in front. Simon came
on
and declared that he could see the ball as big as a watermelon. One run
later he was run out; though he insisted he had his whole body inside
the
crease. It got exciting in the bull pen as Simon flung his hapless bat,
barely missing Hugh. A nearby cooler was not so lucky however. If there
had
been beer in it, Simon would have borne our wrath.
Two of the Anzacs’ greatest underachievers in Shekhar and Panda were at
the
crease. They couldn’t have chosen a better day to put an innings
together.
They looked untroubled in a partnership of 34 runs. Panda was
unfortunate to
have a drive plucked out of thin air by a fielder who had previously
shown
no inclination to deviate from his 90 degree posture. Shekhar too was
unfortunate to be given out run out (if you believe Shekhar, that is!).
With
the help of some minor contributions from the rest of the batsmen, the
Anzacs posted 105 off 30 overs.
While the PACC bowlers extracted very little bounce from the flicx
pitch,
the Anzacs bowlers did an about turn and got the ball to jump
alarmingly,
causing all sorts of trouble for the batsmen and the keeper. New kid on
the
block, Deepesh held on to a blinder in the slips off one such ball by
Parth
to start things off. The Parth-Deepesh combination accounted for
another
wicket, before Deepesh himself came on and quickly made this a debut to
remember. He picked up two highly important wickets in Imran and
Murtaza –
both batsmen capable of winning matches on their own. Satbir kept his
end
tight, picking up two wickets as well.
Sunil, who revels in such situations, bowled beautifully varying line,
length and speed. One well thought out over drew the batsmen out of the
crease almost on cue for Sudeep to complete the formalities behind the
wickets. Hugh got yet another nasty lifter to put PACC on the ropes at
8
down. Parth was soon back in the action, a quick pick up and throw to
run
PACC’s number 10 out. A few anxious moments followed as PACC’s captain
Bilal
opened up and scored a few quick runs. It couldn’t last though, and
trying
to farm the strike off the last ball of Parth’s 5th over, he took off
for a
run and Parth coolly threw down the stumps to bring the innings to a
close
27 runs shy.
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