Our Div 1 team got us underway this weekend and had a tough stint in the field, conceding a 177 run opening partnership. Tushar Sehgal found some late success with 3 wickets at the death, and Anton Kruger conceded only 23 runs from his 4 overs to limit East Coast to 3/195 after 220 was looking on the cards.
Our top order made starts but couldn't carry on, and we were 3/51 in the 8th. Zeeshan Ansari made the most of his promotion up the order, putting on partnerships of 57 with Matt Webb (32 off 25) and 65 with Anton Kruger (20* off 14), but in the end we ran out of overs, 22 runs short. Zee played a blinder hitting an unbeaten 69 off 39 balls, including six 6s. Scorecard
Div 3 played the late game and batted first. There was some improvement from the last game, with a 27 ball 34 from debutant Gurpreet Sidhu being the major contribution while others chipped in around him. All out 120 in the last over, a total we were confident of defending.
Skipper Souvik Mitra gave us more reason to believe we could defent when he struck with his first 2 balls of the season. Titans then built a partnership, but we didn't let them get too far ahead of the required rate, and Gurpreet bowled their main bat for his first wicket in Cannons colours, it was game on. A great spell from Raj Suhagiya (2/10 off 4), and 2 clinically executed run outs turned the game in our favour. Tommy Upton then struck in the 18th over, followed by Souvik in the 19th and Abhilash Chandran taking the last wicket in the 20th, capping off a fine spell of 1/6 off 3.1 overs. These last 2 wickets were both good catches from keeper Hassan Hafeez, who got better as the game went on in his first keeping chance with us. Cannons finished up winning by 16 runs, a really good team effort. Scorecard
Div 2 delivered another great bowling effort keeping Titans to 8/129 off 20. Once again, it was legspinner Nihar Shah who led the way with 3/12 off 3, with Kevin Tuvar, Kanwaljeet Singh and Gurpreet taking one each. Jawad Naimat and Harman Singh both bowled tight spells in their first Div 2 games.
Our chase didn't start well, and we never got ahead of the required rate. Ahsan Hafeez anchored the innings with 30, and Hiren Patel tried valiantly at the end with an unbeaten 38 off 28 balls, but there was little support for these 2 and we fell 12 runs short. Our Div 2 team has some batsmen to return for future games, which should help us improve our batting to match the great bowling displayed so far. Scorecard.
One win from 3, all games close, should be encouragement for everyone to keep working hard. All 3 teams are now at 1-1.
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