Note: This collage only includes players who have played atleast one complete match in the 2011 season. Other members on the roster include Siddharth Santhanam, Muzafar Zaman, Saurabh Jawkar and Vikram Namjoshi.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
2011: Match 11: Vs Knight Riders: Won: By 6 Wickets
Bombay Boys sealed their victory in their 11th match of the season as they beat Knight Riderz after a 2 year hiatus and also succeeded in knocking them out of the battle for the cup.
BB elected to bowl after winning the toss, and it proved to be a wise choice when Ketan picked up the first of his 3 wickets, nabbing opener Sujith who was caught at long-off by Ajay in a “breathtaking” (ahem heart-stopping for everyone else) catch, for a golden duck. Abhishek gave BB another boost in the 5th over as opener Premson was clean bowled for 3 runs and both openers were back to the pavilion. One-down and two-down batsmen from the KR team succeeding in steading the batting innings somewhat and Knight Riders posted a decent 34 runs in the first 10 overs, but the batting lineup started collapsing dramatically towards the second half of their innings as BB came together as a team and played a perfectly controlled bowling innings coupled with precise fielding.
KR lost 8 wickets in the second half of the innings and were all out at the end of 18.2 overs, posting a total of 75 runs - mainly due to the spells of Ashish (3.2-0-10-3) and Ketan (4-0-8-3) who snared 3 wickets each, aided by Saurabh scoring 2 wickets, Chakra and Abhishek taking up the remaining 2.
Openers Ketan and Saurabh both failed to click in this match as KT was dismissed for 8 in the 4th over. Swaroop walked in at the 1-down position and played quick onesies and twosies balancing the pace of the match and setting a steady run rate well in control of the required run rate. When Saurabh was dismissed in the 7th over for 11 runs, Monty got in at the 2-down position but departed soon after in a bizzare fashion, going for the big shot on the very first ball which unfortunately went for a catch.
Swaroop and Paras played well-timed shots, in a sensible method that was the need of the hour, especially after the top order collapse. Both batsmen scored 24 runs each to their credit, of which Swaroop had 2 fours and Paras had 3. BB resumed from the score of 31 at the end of 7 overs when Monty and Saurabh fell and moved way into the 16th over without any further loss of wickets. Swaroop fell prey to a catch in the 16th over and he had to retreat. Chakra and Paras succeeded in chasing the rest of the equation and BB posted 79 runs at the end of 18.2 overs with Paras hitting a 4 as the winning runs.
The league matches have ended and KT defends his MVP title again this year ! BB has 2 batsmen in the batting top 10 and 2 bowlers in the bowling top 10. BB now moves on to the jinxed section of the tournament, the make-or-break knockouts and if we do not make it to the semis, the individual standings might really not carry much meaning.
BB can now boast of a well rounded team completely capable of going all the way to clinch the cup. Calm and steady batting from the middle order in addition to the already firm top order instills further confidence in our batting lineup and recent displays have confirmed that the BB batting can be a complete team effort as and when required. Bowling has improved considerably though we still contine to dole out extras. This match however showed total restraint as we only gave 13 extras in all. If one were to compare fielding attempts from the 1st couple of matches with the latest ones, it would only prove that fielding efforts have improved multifold.
We face Gujju-XI in the quarterfinals on Aug 13, 2011 .
Scores as always have been uploaded on www.cricketmn.com
For more on Bombay Boys, https://www.bombay-boys.blogspot.com
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
2011: Match 10: Vs India XI: Won: By 31 Runs
Bombay Boys crushed India XI in their 10th match of the season at Hopkins the 24th of July 2011
"Veni, Vidi, Vici" - translated to "I came, I saw, I conquered" originally written by Julius Caeser in 47 BC, could have been very well be applied to Saurabh Gandhalikar in this tiny context. Even though Bombay Boys was off to a slow start, Saurabh and KT stood strong and steady with Saurabh clearly in the limelight hitting colossal sixes and fours building a gigantic score for himself, an unbelievable 79 off 67 balls, an individual score which could easily have been the final score of a full 11-player team. He is also the only player since the inception of Bombay Boys for whom the scoresheet space ran out and we had to use up a whole new batsman record to score his runs. Saurabh and KT built up a steady partnership playing quick singles and doubles and going for the big shots every once in a while. Bombay Boys maintained an impressive momentum right through the 10th over halftime break at which point their score stood at 62 runs for no loss - and remained wicketless right until the 16th over when KT's shot went for a clean catch and Bombay Boys lost its first wicket. The score at the end of this over was 96 runs. KT to his credit scored 17 off 34 balls. A decent score - awaiting more action in the upcoming matches. In the interim, the India XI captain managed to drop 2 catches - both of Saurabh - which proved to be mighty expensive for them as the vice-captain got life after life and Bombay Boys continued to make mincemeat of the bowlers. 1-down Paras scored 5 runs, 2-down Monty posted 15 off 9 balls and 3-down Abhishek completed the batting innings contributing 3 runs finally taking the Bombay Boys total to 130 runs at the end of 20 overs.
With the exception of Amol and Ananda who bowled good innings with statistics of 4-0-11-2 and 4-0-13-0 respectively; all the other bowlers ended up bowling atleast 6 runs per over; the most expensive one bowling 12 runs per over.
The boys also bowled and fielded decently well with enough agression taking wickets at regular intervals. Nitin and KT shone at the very start as they took 3 wickets in the very first 3 overs of the bowling innings - 2 catches and a well co-ordinated runout - as both openers, usually strong batsmen were cleanly dismissed for measly single digit scores. AP2 took another well timed catch in the 6th over proving to be another setback for India XI. It looked promising for BB as the bowlers and fielders continued to keep their aggression on for the rest of the innings. At the end of 10 overs, India XI stood at 51 runs for the loss of 4 wickets. Not bad at all except for the number of wickets they had in hand.
The overs following the halftime break went by without much activity but a magnificient catch by Milind in the 14th over woke up the dormant audience on both sides of the game. This time clearly enunciating his call to take the catch so that there would be no confusion with Monty like the prior match, Milind ran headlong and dived an unbelievable distance grasping the ball but hitting the ground with his head and kinda ended up doing a cartwheel on his head. Stunned initially, it took a couple of seconds for the players and the supporters to recover as they ran towards him, where he sat clutching his head with one hand and the ball with the other - to make sure he was alright. The first words he spoke were "Is baar maine
The rest of the India XI batting line-up slowly crumbled and BB sealed their 8th victory bowling out their most vengeful opponents till date by 31 runs - remaining unbeatable so far in the league matches. Sourabh Jain had come expecting an India-Pak match and I am sure was mighty disappointed when it fizzled out and looked like the outcome of a peace treaty discussion with India XI and the BB players chatting amicably. Of the bowlers, Abhishek had a near perfect statistics of 3.4-1-11-3 and KT, Nitin, Ashish and Monty contributed to the rest of the 5 wickets (in addition to 2 runouts)
BB now faces their last league match of the season on Saturday, Aug 6th 2:00 PM Eagan Bombay
Scores as always have been uploaded on www.cricketmn.com
For more on Bombay Boys: http://bombay-boys.blogspot.com
Cheers,
Deepa.
One Team. One Dream.
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