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
