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“FRIENDS11 secured their third win with a commanding display over KCWA”
After the tremendous victory over Martians on the 30th April, F11 was so excited to play the 3rd match of the season against KCWA on Saturday 14th May 16. The weather was lovely and pitch conditions were really good.
Considering the pitch conditions and having confidence in the balanced structure of bowling and batting line up, the Vice Captain of F11 Justin Thomas elected to bat first when he won the toss. However, the start was bit unfortunate for F11, the most experienced bowling attack lead by Sunny Janardhan and Rajeev Ayikkara of KCWA created massive destruction in the batting line up. F11 lost three wickets in the first 3 overs for just 9 runs, KCWA had dominated F11 with their bowling strength until our master blaster Jayaram Jayaraj, who came to the crease and anchored us to score a decent total. His innings was calm and composed one, filled with exciting shots and mesmerising style. He was well supported by our senior batsman Sreekumar Menon who charmed the fellow team members with his classic shots. They build a partnership of 98 runs, where Jayaram Jayaraj scored 72 runs off just 52 balls and Sreekumar Menon scored 30 runs off 45 balls. However, an excellent fielding coordination from KCWA dismissed Srikumar Menon through a run out and they managed to break that partnership even though it created abhorrent destruction within their bowling department. But the next person to come on crease was the most aggressive batsman of F11, George Riju. The hulk like aggression from Riju created more destruction, which included two consecutive sixes. The spin attack by Thomas Jacob brought an end to a classic innings of Jayaram Jayaraj where he was caught on the mid-wicket and later Riju got dismissed by an unfortunate runout. Apart from Anand Sajeevan who scored 15 runs off 14 balls, the tail end of F11 could not perform well. Finally, at the end of the first innings F11 managed to put 187/10 on board from 30 overs.
The second innings started at 1400hrs and F11 started the game with an ease of mind, as it’s the fact that F11 got the best bowling line up within the league. But the openers Ashish J and Sajeev P batted sensibly and they managed to give a good start for their chase. F11 grabbed the first wicket only on the fifth over, where Midhun Sebastian showed his excellency in both bowling and fielding as Ashish got caught and bowled by Midhun. More aggression in bowling was witnessed in the second spell, where Justin Thomas grabbed the most valuable wickets of Varun S and Sajeev P. But we realised the fact that KCWA has some of the experienced and matured batsmen within their team which was evident from a beautiful innings by Thomas Jacob who scored 50 runs off 40 balls and well supported by Sajeev Bhanu. The excellent partnership built by Thomas Jacob and Sajeev Bhanu made F11 under great pressure even though they had the best bowling line up. A great spell by Anand Sajeevan who managed to bowl few dot balls, released the pressure of F11 and the second line of attack by Justin Thomas and George Riju dismissed both Thomas Jacob and Sajeev Bhanu which lead F11 again to the fortunate side. Midhun Sebastian is always a great finisher, he grabbed two consecutive wickets in his last over and put a full stop to the run chase of KCWA in the 30th over and F11 won the match for 27 runs.
‘Catches wins’ matches’ is now engraved within each player of F11 and they may have learned that by now.
Report by Arun Krishnan
