Engineers score over Serendib
Nostalgic Engineers team shows off its might
By Biju Paul
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Well this victory is for the oldies. A team consisting of some of the Engineers
past performers got together to make a team for the first KCL match of the
season to be played at Moriya, which has now become the Engineers home ground.
When former Engineer Ashoke Sharma decided to make a weekend trip to Japan he
chose a date that coincided with a KCL match. Then came long time inactive
members Sriram Sampath and Jagan Panda to make it a nostalgic team, with the
exception of a few others such as Viswa Ghosh, Silvester Pereira, Santhosh
Ghadge and the self exiled Bobby Philips.
The party had already started on Friday night itself when Ashoke had lived up to
his old title of manoranjan vyavastapak (Entertainment Manager) and
led a team of Engineers in and out of Zest Mexican restaurant in Roppongi.
Having had a day to recover on Saturday, the Engineers set out to Moriya ground
on Sunday in sober state and the match got going at 12 noon.
Serendib won the toss and elected to bat first. Engineers knew that the score
could probably be around 200 given the small boundary infront of the batsman.
But the Engineers had Serendib soon in trouble at 4/17 in 9 overs, all the
batsmen perishing trying to score over the short long on/long off boundary.
Rajneesh had started the bowling along with Shailaj, who drew the first blood in
his 1st over when he trapped Arish in front of the wicket. Rajneesh had his
first wicket in his 2nd over when he had Dhanuka caught by Sanjeeb at long off
going for a big hit. Soon Serendib realised the reality that the wind is against
the batsmen and the ball doesn't sail over the bowler's head that easily. They
changed gears and it was a rebuilding effort from their side. The 5th wicket
yielded a sensible partnership of 56 runs, the sixth wicket partnership
yielding another 56 runs and the 7th 30 runs. While Engineers bowlers struggled
after the initial success, their fielders didn't help them either, dropping a
few easy catches as well as some difficult ones. Engineers have been dropping
catches in bunches since the beginning of the season anyway, so this performance
was not a big surprise for them either. Seeing the frontline bowlers suffering
skipper decided to try the new comers of the season Jagan and Ashoke but neither
gave the Engineers any hope and only helped Serendib in their quest of building
the innings. The two together gave away 28 runs in 2 overs. While Shailaj was
the most successful bowler with figures of 3/32, Rajneesh was miserly giving
away only 17 runs in 7 overs with a return of 2 wickets.
Serendib really applied themselves here to make it a respectable total from a
near precarious situation and played all their 35 overs. Their most successful
batsman was Jayathura with 62 runs, the batsman benefitting from Engineers
butter fingers a few times.
The Engineers started their innings with newly promoted opener Bikash Mohanty
and Anurag Singh with Bikash given a specific instruction of seeing off the new
ball (grapevine, however, has it that he was assigned the
task of protecting the opener) after his success in the previous match.
In any case, Bikash didn't last long and fell for 1 failing in his unofficial
and undocumented task, giving fodder to Sharmaji for a series of jokes
for the rest of the day. The second wicket partnership between Anurag and Dinesh
proved to be decisive as the pair put up 94 runs. Anurag was always running
dangerously and his fall also came through such an effort. Backing up too much
for a single, he couldn't get back to his crease in time when Dinesh, the
striker, denied a call for a single. His 40 contained 5 hits to the boundary.
That brought Sidde Raju to the crease. He opened his account straight away in
the 2nd ball he faced with a hit to the boundary. Raju didn't bother to run much
and he mostly dealt with 4s and 6s. Both Dinesh and Raju troubled the Serendib
the maximum they could but Dinesh then fell to a ball that shot along the ground
after pitching taking the batsman by surprise and uprooting his middle stump,
for a personal score of 42(6x4, 1x6). In came Sriram Sampath, who was playing
after a gap of almost two years. But his lazy elegance was in full display
during his brief stay. His personal score of 21 off 13 balls contained three 4s
and one 6.
The responsibility of seeing the Engineers through then fell on to skipper
Sanjeeb and hard hitting Raju but the skipper could not give company to Raju
long enough. He left a ball that was on the off stump thinking it was on the leg
stump. The ball held its line and knocked back the correct stump in its path.
Mutters of "well left skipper" could be heard in the dressing room at this
point. Seeing the familiar middle order collapse, Raju decided to take matters
into his own hands and went berserk, and the bowler, Sameera, suffered. His
final over went for 18 runs, three 6s in a row. Needing only 2 runs for a win
and 3 runs for a well deserved half century for Raju, Shailaj who was at the
other end decided to stay to put and blocked out all the balls. Raju then hit a
4 at the next opportunity to seal a great victory for the Engineers. His 51(4x4,
5x6) came off only 28 balls.
Brief scores:
Serendib 201/9 (35 ov). Jayathura 62, S Lal 3/32
IECC 204/5 (29.1 ov). A Singh 40, D Singh 42, S Raju 51*
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Serendip scrape through
Engineers were not good enough to last the pressure
By Silvester Pereira
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Rains had almost threatened to spoil another day of cricket; this time a
friendly between IECC and Serendib played in a soccer field in Kashiwa, Chiba
(close to Moriya). Indian engineers were the first to arrive at the ground and
setup the flex pitch while waiting for the opponents. Serendib won the toss and
elected to bat in a 30 overs per side game.
The Serendib openers (Sachinat and Sameera) batted cautiously in the early
stages before the Engineers opening bowler Rajneesh got the first wicket (lbw)
with the score reading 25 for 1 at the end of 5 overs. Biju was the other
opening bowler followed by Dinesh, Sanjeeb, Vehzy etc. The ball was keeping very
low, sometimes almost skidding. Our bowlers at times had kept a good line but
almost all our bowlers bowled at least 30+ wides with grand total of 40+ extras.
The Serendib batsmen had a hard time scoring under these conditions and the
opener Sachinta even offered two straight forward catches but we failed to gab
on those opportunities.(Unlucky Bowler being Dinesh). At one stage, Serendib
were 51/5. We dropped few more catches along the way, Sachinta, riding his luck,
gradually began to solidify his batting with some good strokes/boundaries while
the rest of Serendib batsmen hardly scored, got out mostly bowled or lbw to some
good bowling especially from Sanjeeb who ended up with 4 wickets haul for 13
runs. Serendib finished their innings with a low score of 139 of which the
opener Sachinta remained not out on 53.
The Engineers opened the innings with Yogesh and skipper Sanjeeb but lost
Yogesh early on lbw to the opening bowler. Dinesh came in with the score at 5/1
and started to attack the bowling. He hit some splendid boundaries (4 fours and
a six) in just 15 balls before he tried to go for another big hit and was
brilliantly caught of the bowling of the first change bowler. While Dinesh was
at the crease it appeared the match would be over quickly as we were scoring at
an average of 8~10 runs per over and at one stage we were 46/2 in 5 overs. The
middle order batsmen tried to hang in there scoring at an average of 4 runs per
over but with some good bowling from the Sri Lankans and some sloppy shots from
our batsmen, we kept loosing wickets at periodic interval. By the end of 20
overs, the score was xx, still needing another 30+ runs in 10 overs and 3
wickets in hand, it was still anybody’s game. Around 25 overs with 2 wickets in
hand and 30 odd runs required, Raju, our main hope, who was still at the crease
but yet to get runs, started to open the face of his bat going for some hits. He
managed to score some boundaries including a six (six coming off a fielder who
failed to take the catch at the fence and the ball popping out of his hands and
over the line. With the six in the 29th over, the match was now evenly poised
and full of nerves with about 6 runs required in 8 balls and one wicket in hand.
Raju went for another big hit (possibly to score a six and finish the match) but
failed to hit it cleanly and was caught by the fielder at mid-on. Serendib won
the friendly match by 5 runs.
Though the engineers lost the match, it was a good close game with lots of
fireworks and excitement and good sportsmanship and team spirit by both teams.
We gave more wides (36) compared to Serendib (20). Overall the wides and the
dropped catches in our fielding has cost us the game.
Brief scores:
Serendip: 140. S Sahoo 4/13
IECC: 136(28.2 ov). D Singh 23, S Raju 29
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