We won the toss and elected to field, Nazeer had a plan - obviously, we knew that 'The Opposition' is a better fielding/bowling side than a batting side, Sunny and Saurabh opened, we all knew that their team depends so much on Sunny's batting, while Saurabh was struggling on one end, Sunny was batting with supreme aplomb, he was middling the ball well and played some cracking cover drives, square cuts, one of the pull shots he played sailed over the deep mid-wicket boundary for a six off Mushtaq. He was starting to be a thorn in the flesh, Saurabh on the other hand had no clue on how to play Mushtaq and Suhail, he was basically eating the deliveries, Sunny was the only one who was scoring but the run rate was under control for us, 5 overs 16, 7 overs 24 and so on, Saurabh finally was gone stumped by me off the bowling of Nazeer, Mehul came in next and was gone immediately caught by Sumit at short backward point off Nazeer, a well thought-out plan by Nazeer. Rucheek the captain came in next and was rotating the strike better, the run rate got a little better, but then came Sunny's dismissal, Suhail pitched one short of a length and Sunny went for a pull, he was never in control of the shot I thought but the ball was traveling and Faheed was at the deep square leg boundary, he moved in nicely made a split second decision either to take the ball on one bounce or to go for the catch and he went for it and pulled off an excellent diving catch, I haven't seen an outfield catch of this calibre in ARCL so far, it was definitely a turning point in the game, the score was in the upper 40s when Sunny left and they were 3 down, and they managed to add only around 20 more runs at the end after that dismissal, a couple of overs later Mushtaq pulled off a blinder of a catch Jonty style at point to get rid of Deepak C, the ball was traveling wide off point, but Mushtaq kept his eyes on the ball all through and timed his dive very well, he was almost airborne when he took the catch, all of us were shaking our head in disbelief on the commitment that Mushtaq showed. Our fielding was top class, Faheed again stopped a certain boundary at short extra cover moving to his right quickly from short cover and stopping that full blooded extra cover drive from Saurabh early in the innings. We definitely did raise the bar today in all aspects. The Opposition were 67 runs at the end of 16 overs for the loss of 4 wickets.
After a superb effort in the field and restricting The Opposition to 67 the team looked confident, Mushtaq and Faheed opened, Faheed played a straight drive to mid-off and took off for the single, hesitated in between, the mid-on fielder Rakshit threw it to the bowler Deepak C who threw the stumps down, Faheed's dive at the end did not save his wicket and was run out, a disastrous start, I went in next, I felt that the wicket was playing really well, the temperature was in the mid-80s and the wicket seemed to have dried up nicely and the ball was coming on to the bat, it was good for batting, I was able to find the gaps with ease, especially in the cover region, I played to my strengths, Mushtaq on the other end was playing very sensibly, was not taking any risks and was milking the ball for ones and twos, we carried off in similar fashion until the 6th over, we were 33 for 1, Rucheek the bowler bowled one on the leg stump on a good length I played towards mid-wicket with a straight bat, Sunny was positioned at forward short leg an interesting position I thought, he put his left hand out and the ball stuck in his hand to pull of a stunning catch, I was out for 12.
Muneer came in next and started to play his shots from the word go, he hit two glorious boundaries off successive balls and the third one for a two, he followed it up with a couple more fantastic boundaries and we were almost done :), Mushtaq on the other hand carried on with his ones and twos, Muneer finished off in style at the end with a 'maximum' when there was 6 runs required, Muneer made 26 n.o and Mushtaq 21 n.o, we chased down this total in 9 overs to reach the FINALS.
Way to Go Sarfarosh!
Our Finals will be with Zhakaas on 7/19 at 10:30 am at the MS grounds.
Lets move on to Div E as the 'title winners' :) GO SARFAROSH!
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