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Victorious Martians continued their record of bowling out all of their opponents!
A Dedicated display of teamwork lead to a well-deserved win for Martians in their return game against champions EMCC. The commanding performance from Martians proved they did their homework well after the loss against the experienced opponents in their first match.
Scores [Martians 134 All out (35 overs), EMCC 65 All out (20 overs)]
Earlier on the day Martians won the toss and elected to bat first. A patient innings from their opener Biju Pillai 30 (60 balls) and an aggressive batting display from Midlaj 31 (21 balls) at the back end of the innings helped Martians to build a reasonable total for their bowlers to defend.
Martians opened their innings with Biju and Rafi, but experienced Sujith gave EMCC an early breakthrough by removing Rafi in his second over. Shiya bowled an outstanding delivery that swings in and took the off stump of Liju in the next over to put EMCC in command. Biju and Navas steadied the innings without further loss till 15th over, but EMCC bowlers restricted both from scoring freely. Martians lost their third wicket at the 14th over when Janish struck with a quickie that took the outside edge of Navas’s bat to the wicket keeper Abin for an easy catch leaving Martians in trouble at 50/3 in 15 overs. Biju and Arafath, who played sensibly, restricted the opposition to capitalize their initial success and continued to score in one’s and two’s and took the score to 78/4 in 24 overs. Martians lost their 5th wicket in the 25th over when Biju attempted to accelerate the score and caught by Sujith of the bowling of Sajeev. After the departure of Arafat, attempting to clear the boundary rope, Midlaj played an excellent and aggressive innings at the end by hitting couple of huge sixes of the bowling of Rakesh to accelerate the run score. Finally Martians innings came to an end in the final delivery of the innings for 134 all out leaving a reasonable score for their bowlers to defend. It was a committed and well planned batting performance from Martians batsmen.
After lunch, EMCC opened their innings with Rakesh and Janish. Both batsmen were started comfortably and negotiated Martians opening bowlers carefully during the initial overs. But Midlaj struck in his third over clean bowled Janish with a brilliant yorker that left the batsman clueless. Rakesh at the other end was in good form finding occasional boundaries of Martians opening bowlers Midlaj and Nawas. But the joy didn’t last too long for EMCC as the new comer Hashif started off aggressively knocking out the stumps of Sajeev and Sushmith in his first and second over. Asif continued to strike in his third over by uprooting the stumps of well settled Rakesh, again with a magnificent yorker length delivery. On the other end Navas, who was very consistent and accurate throughout his excellent spell, forced EMCC captain Riyaz to hit a full length delivery up in the air offering Rafi an easy catch. By now Martians were all set to go for a rip off through the tail end of EMCC as they were down to 40/5. Asif continued his terrific spell while at the other end Sanesh removed Shiya who resisted for a while against the aggressive Martians bowlers. It was all over for EMCC as the last man Shyam trapped LBW by Asif who picked up his 5th wicket on his debut in UKMCL. EMCC were convincingly outplayed by Martians in all aspects of the game and bowled out for 65 runs in 20 overs. All the four bowlers Midlaj (4-1-12-1), Navas (7-2-14-2), Hashif (7-1-20-5) and Sanesh (3-0-12-2) were outstanding during their spells.
Martians exhibited some high quality cricket with a well-disciplined and calculated approach to the game and continued- their record of bowling out all their oppositions so far with an outstanding team effort.
