Taide, Ganesh on rampage

 

 

 

YOUNG opener Atharva Taide hit an unbeaten whirlwind hundred while seasoned campaigner Ganesh Satish missed the coveted mark by just one run as Team Green and Team Blue scored convincing wins in the ongoing Twenty20 cricket tournament organised by VCA at Jamtha Stadium on Wednesday. Leading the side, Taide scored a 60-ball 106 with 12 hits to the fence and four over it in Green’s huge 93-run victory over Team Orange. In the other game, Ganesh hammered 99 from just 58 balls with the help of nine fours and five sixes as Blue drubbed Team Yellow by 45 runs. Team Orange invited Green to have first strike and seamer Praful Hinge got them the first breakthrough by getting rid of Kedar Jagtap for just four runs. The team score was 15-1 in 2.4 overs. But Taide and new man Tushar Gill (79; 51b, 9x4, 2x6) cut loose in the powerplay and the team raced to 52 runs in just 5.4 overs with extras contributing 11. Both batsmen continued matching stroke for stroke. The duo had a huge partnership of 194 runs for the second wicket before Gill was out on second ball of the last over.

 

Shubham Dubey (4) was out on last ball of the innings with scoreboard flashing 216-3 in 20 overs. Man of the match Taide carried his bat through. Hinge (4-0-36-3), who bowled a fine last over, snared all the three wickets to fall. In pursuit of the huge target, Orange never recovered from the twin blows by speedster Manan Doshi (2-24). He removed both the openers Yash Rathod and Siddhesh Wath for nought and seven respectively. Other bowlers complemented to restrict the opponents to 123-7. Aditya Khilote (2-22), Rajneesh Gurbani (1-21) and Deepak Jangid (1-28) were among the wickets. In the afternoon game, Blue elected to bat. Though they lost Aniket Pande (2) and Akshay Agarwal (5) early on, Ganesh and skipper Shalabh Shrivastava (55; 47b, 4x4, 1x6) brought in all the experience and stitched an important 142-run partnership scoring at a good rate. On first ball of the 19th over bowled by Lalit Yadav (3-38), Ganesh was out clean bowled for 99.

 

The team lost four more wickets with batsmen going for big hits. Aditya Thakare (2-40) helped himself with a couple of wickets in the final over. But by then the team had scored 192-7. Chasing the target, Yellow openers Avesh Shaikh (25; 13b, 5x4) and Aniruddha Choudhary (20; 20b, 2x4) had a steady start accumulating 35 runs in 3.5 overs before the former was stumped by Aniket Pande off leggie Shantanu Chikhale (4-0-23-3). One run later offie Satyam Bhoyar (3-0-13-1) cleaned up Shivam Deshmukh for no score. Captain Akshay Wadkar (21; 23b, 2x4), Akshay Dullarwar (36; 26b, 5x4) and later Thakare (22*; 14b, 1x4, 2x6) scored some runs that were too little. When last of the stipulated 20 overs was bowled the team was stopped at 147-9. Suraj Rai picked two for 42 while off-break bowler Kushal Pimpalkar snapped two for 25 from his tight four overs. Nachiket Parande dismissed the top scorer.