Resolute batting performance

'Da freaks for the game: Maddy, Vicky, Mani, Raghu, Sri, Jagan, Raghav, Kail, Ram, Yogi and Suresh.

Jagan has been our lucky mascot and his toss winning habit continued. We elected to bat first as Mani believes it is our weak link. Our batting has a familiar pattern, slow start, lose wickets in the middle, break free in the end. So in order to break the routine, we decided to start with Raghu and Sri hoping to get an impetus. It turned out ok till the third over by which we had managed 19 runs without losing a wicket. When Raghu got out to a rash shot, the very next over, our scoring rate dropped alarmingly. Kailash, Ram, Raghav and Sri didn't last long and we were struggling to get any momentum to our innings. Yogi and Vicky played sensibly from then on, Yogi especially looking good at finding gaps thru the covers. We managed to score 61 runs at the end of 11 overs when Yogi got out. I stepped in and hit some blows and our running between the wickets also helped. The opposition were now struggling to control the leak and we managed to get 92 at the end of 14 overs.

Fielding in the deep is not my forte and I found out how hard it can be even to have the visual of the ball. Jagan and Suresh started the innings, and our bowling unit seems pretty set now. Jagan leaked some runs in his first over and so Mani brought himself as the first change. Soon enough he got a wicket. Though the runs were coming off their bats, it never really looked like a chase as we pegged them back with wickets everytime. Raghu and Jagan picked up a couple of wickets each. I was asked to bowl an over as part of the lets-try-the-second-string options. Though I managed to pick up a wicket, 9 runs were scored in my over as I persisted with bowling full tosses, then again we managed to put down two catches, one tough and another one a sitter. There was also a dubious run out when Raghav showed good awareness to throw the ball to me when the runner was just strolling back to the grease after the ball was bowled. We effected a run out and since the ball was not dead, the umpire also had to give that out. We once again managed to knock a team inside the 14th over as the opposition only managed 70 runs.

A victory by 22 runs margin in a 14 over match is quite a good margin. Vicky keeps tracking our winning streak, it has now stretched to five games!!

Cheers,
Maddy for 'Da Freaks