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.
