Nazeer won the toss for Sarfarosh and elected to bat, Faheed and I opened, the moment I faced the first ball I realized that it is going to be difficult to bat, the ball was keeping really low and was coming off the wicket really slow than normal, the bowler Ramzi didn't give me any width for the first three balls that I faced I had to basically dig it out from hitting the stumps since it was low and straight and turning into me, the fourth ball I got out of the crease and played it on the up to the right off the short mid-wicket fielder, the ball was going slow to the fielder and there was a run in my opinion I called and ran, Faheed had his hand up like a traffic policeman in India indicating to stop :-) I didn't hear his 'NO' and he was rooted to his crease didn't move an inch, and by the time I realized that he had absolutely no intention to run I was three-fourth down the pitch and I couldn't get back in time, it was a terrible mix-up and the first time with Faheed with whom I have/had great understanding in terms of running between wickets until that day, well moving on, 0 for 1 and Nazeer came in next, even though it was difficult to bat on that wicket, Nazeer and Faheed did really well to steady the ship, they ran well, both of them were not middling or timing the ball well, but was able to get four to five runs an over consistenly and before the opponent could realize we had fifty-runs up on the board in the tenth over. It was a fantastic fifty-run partnership between Nazeer and Faheed.
We had to accelerate now and Nazeer fell, stumped in the process, Suhail F came in next (promoted up in the batting order) and hit some lusty blows, one of them cleared the square leg fence, Faheed on the other end settled down really well, after realizing the difficult batting conditions, he nudged the ball around for ones and twos and was giving Suhail most of the strike, the pair ran really well and stole some good runs from right under the opponents nose.
BlackHawks to be honest is a terrible fielding side, they dropped probably close to half-a-dozen catches, on top of that their ground fielding was sloppy, I am glad we used that to good effect.
Faheed retired after making a valuable forty-two, Suhail made thirty-six and was unbeaten at the end, we made 101 runs for the loss of just two wickets - a formidable total at the MS grounds.
It was always going to be difficult chasing such a huge total at the MS grounds, BlackHawks lost wickets at regular intervals due to some fine bowling by Mushtaq, Sumit, Nazeer, Suhail and Amogh. Nazeer's off-spin turned out to be effective, he must be proud of that classic off-spinner's dismissal where he bowled the bastman, Suhail and Sumit took two wickets apiece, Nazeer took one and Amogh came at the end and bowled the last batsman. Faheed made an excellent run out from short cover with a direct hit.
BlackHawks was all out for forty-four runs not even half of our total score which gave us some valuable points, we were able to get twenty-nine points with this win to put us in the top three in the league currently, probably second in the table. This should put us in contention for the semi-finals with one more preliminary game to go with 'Items' on 6/28 @ 10:30 am at the MS Grounds.
Great Win Guys!
On to Items next!
