Yellow, Sky Blue register victories

 

 

TEAM Yellow and Team Sky Blue registered easy victories over their respective rivals in the ongoing Vidarbha Cricket Association organised T20 Cricket Tournament at its Jamtha ground.

Akshay Wadkar’s Team Yellow rode on three half centuries from its batters as they posted a mammoth 191 for five wickets in allotted 20 overs.

Chasing the target, Team Red made 153 runs for nine from 20 overs.

Left-handed opener Avesh Shaikh and Anirudha Choudhary gave a solid start to Team Yellow scoring half centuries each.

While Shaikh’s knock came from 38 deliveries having eight boundaries, Choudhary slammed his 50 from 40 balls with the help of two fours and three sixes.

They added 80 runs for the opening wicket. Departure of Shaikh in the 10th over , who was caught by Himanshu Joshi off Dushant Tekan, brought in Yash Kadam in the middle. He was more severe on Team Red bowlers.

He hammered almost all the bowlers scored an unbeaten 59 from just 32 deliveries. The southpaw’s knock had four boundaries and as many sixes.

A mini collapse in the middle saw Team Yellow going from 127 for two to 139 for 4. Captain Wadkar (4) and Akshay Dullarwar (0) could not make an impact of the beautiful start.

However, Lalit Yadav used his long handle to hit three huge sixes scoring 21 runs from 8 deliveries which helped his side reach 191 in 20 overs.

Team Red started cautiously and posted 40 runs for the opening wicket with Mandar Mahale (17) and Aman Mokhade (27) leading the charge. But Mehul Raikwar sent Mahale in the sixth over and then Dullarwar trapped Mokhade in front to rock Red ship.

An over later, Dullarwar was again in spotlight as he got Nachiket Bhute being caught by Yash Kadam without disturbing the scorer.

Captain and wicketkeeper Jitesh Sharma tried to change the complexion of the game with some hard hitting 28 from 15 deliveries with two huge sixes and three boundaries but his entertaining knock came to an end with Yadav caught him off Raikwar in the 11th over before he had sent Vaibhav Chandekar back for 9 runs.

With all the main batters gone, it was really hard for Red to make a comeback and then managed 153 for nine from 20 overs.

For Yellow, Raikwar was the most successful bowler with three wickets while Ganesh Bhosale took two and Kadam and Tushar Kadu one each.

Kadam was named man of the match for his all-round show.

In the other match, Team Sky Blue had no difficulty in thrashing Team Green by six wickets.

Inviting Green to bat first, Team Sky Blue did well to restrict them to 135 for 8 in 20 overs.

Pacer Sanmesh Deshmukh and spinner Hemant Bajpai bowled well to share four wickets between them as they made scoring runs difficult for the Atharv Taide led team.

Captain Taide started well as the opener scored 26 off 15 balls with five boundaries. But his innings was cut short in the third over when Nayan Chavan caught him off Siddhesh Neral. Kedar Jagtap too scored an identical 26 runs but was too slow consuming 37 deliveries.

Shubham Dubey (15) and Dharmendra Ahlawat (28*) were the other notable scorers for Green.

In reply, the Mohit Kale-led side achieved the target with four balls to spare and six wickets intact. Opener R Sanjay (11) was sent back cheaply and Sourabh Thubrikar, the other opener managed 31, highest score of their innings. Kale was going strong with his 15-ball 21 but was caught short of his crease by Tushar Gil in the 11th over.

Nayan Chavan (24) too tried to score at a brisk pace but was caught by keeper Shreeyog Pawar off Rajneesh Gurbani.

Rushabh Rathod and Gaurav Dhoble then joined hands and made it sure there is no more damage to their side as they crossed the line in time.

Rathod scored an unbeaten 28 from 25 balls stitched with two sixes while Dhoble made 14-ball 15 with one ball over the fence.

For Green, Manan Dosi took two wickets.