Game #7: Gladiators def Wildcards by 60 runs

The junoon to play cricket in the two teams on ground was commendable. Wet outfield, overcast conditions - it would have been a fair decision to call off the match. But instead, players from both teams tried their level best to steal a game out. Fortunately the outfield was playable but the major problem was the pitch. The pitch was checked for bounce and it wasn't pathetic and hence acceptable :) . Krish from Wildcards use a coffee cup to pour water out of the pools of water around the pitch. Guys went to buy cat litter to pour and fill the pools around the pitch. Once that was done, and as soon as it seemed possible that bowlers can just somehow run in and ball, we had a toss. Sameer going in to toss in the absence of Imran (gone to buy cat litter) proudly lost it yet again. As expected, Wildcards elected to field. The match was reduced to 20 overs a side.

Ahsan failed yet again as an opener, this time finding the strangest of ways to get out - hit-wicket. He slipped trying to pull a ball and lost his balance on a completely muddy pitch, and hit the wicket with his bat. Mudit and Yasir played sensibly to see out their opening bowlers - Irshad (a former Gladiator) and Owais (a former Ranji player for J&K). Both gave a few loose balls but were tight in general. Both the bowlers completed their quota at a stretch and after 8 overs, Gladiators were a healthy 45/1 with Yasir doing the bulk of the scoring till then.

The quality of bowling dipped a little after the first spell by Irshad and Owais. Sensing this, Gladiators looked to up the scoring rate. YasirB got out trying this and Sameer joined Mudit. Mudit got out yet again to a 35+ (but below 50 score) immediately after scoring a couple of sixes over covers. The beauty of Gladiators' innings was that always one of the batsmen at the crease was taking the responsibility to keep the runs flowing. First it was YasirB's hits, then Mudit hit out a few shots when Sameer was getting set at the crease. When Asghar joined Sameer at Mudit's dismissal, we witnessed a small (from Sameer's standard) butchering of the bowlers - 5 sixes and racing to 40 in just 16 balls. Then when he got out and Imran went in, Asghar continued from where he left on the previous inning's bowler-killing spree. He too scored a good 40 of 15 balls before getting out caught at the right at the boundary - a good catch by Owais, who looked like the only player in their team who could have taken the catch. Earlier, Wildcards had spilled 4 catches, all regulation, in a wild display of fielding. Finally Imran played sensibly till the end to ensure the score reaches a strong 186/7 in 20 overs. It was a good total considering the wet pitch and the outfield. A good team effort, with three scores of 40 in the middle order and two 20s. But I must give due (dis)credit to the bowlers who consistently bowled either fulltosses or short to help our batsmen reach the total. Again, it just required our bowlers to not screw up too badly to reach the 6th win of the tournament.

Ankur and Owais opened for Wildcards and they used the pace of M&M to play some shots. Both the pacers had some problems in their runup because of the wet pitch. Despite this they bowled at a lively pace, but the deadly accuracy that they have shown in the last few matches was missing. After 6 overs, Wildcards were nearly 45/0. Imran made the first bowling change and it worked immediately. Imran took a juggling catch at long-off of Mudit's bowling to get rid of Ankur. Mudit took another wicket (c&b) in his next over and put a brake on the runrate. Imran brought himself next and took the wicket of the dangerous Vinod in his over, thanks to a fine catch by Afzal at midwicket. While wickets were tumbling at one end, Owais continued to keep hitting at one end. Eventually, he got out to Imran but only after a good 60+ with few good out of the park hits over mid-wicket and resulting in a few lost balls. Arpit got his first chance at bowling, and bowled the 18th and 20th over. After a couple of balls, he found his line and length with the wet and hard-to-grip ball. He bowled some beautiful leggie stuff, and got two wickets for his efforts.

In the end, it was a good team effort yet again. A collective batting effort followed by some good fielding and good collective bowling sealed the 6th victory for Gladiators. The fielding was good throughout too, despite a slippery outfield.

My Bowler of the day: Imran (taking 3 wickets including the dangerous Vinod and Owais)

My Fielder of the day: Sameer (wonderful keeping despite the slippery ground and uneven bounce from the wet pitch)

My Batsmen of the day: Sameer (40 of 17 balls) & Asghar (40 of 16 balls) -play a little faster guys!!

My Man of the match: (close one) Sameer

Game #6: Gladiators def Tigers by 6 wkts

Back form a vacation, I was craving for some cricket. There were several changes in the team from when I left 3 games back. Zeeshan, Sameer and Saad were not playing. Arpit was playing his first game for Gladiators. MeghDutt (MD) was in town and available for a short time and was playing for Gladiators again.

Tigers, or Gujju XI, are a reasonably strong team but we knew we had to play strong to win the game. Imran lost the toss again and Tigers CC elected to bat. I believe he should practice tossing at home before coming for the match. Losing tosses was one of the main reasons why Sameer was dropped from his captaincy ;).

Mansoor and Mohsin opened the bowling for Gladiators. The outfield was quite wet and required our fielders to go in with towels to keep the ball dry. The first 6 overs from the M&M opening pair was one of the best exhibition of fast attacking bowling I have seen. Although they just lost 1 wicket, both Mohsin and Mansoor were bang on target. The pace was lively and the combination of line and length on most occasions was unplayable. Afzal, keeping in place of Sameer had big shoes to fill (well literally too- give him any teammates shoes and it will be big for him). And he did a wonderful job. I am sure keeping to bowlers at that pace must have resulted in sore hands.

The next few spells from other bowlers were tight too, with some relatively loose overs in the middle. The Tigers were never allowed to score freely. The last few overs again saw exceptional bowling from Mohsin and Imran. Mohsin took 3 more wickets (all clean bowled) in his 2nd spell and Imran proved too cunning to be scored off. In the end it was a very professional display of bowling that restricted Tigers to 129 in 25 overs. For once, I saw Mohsin bowling to his potential after a long time. He had the pace and the control, and very deservedly he is at the top of the bowling rankings in the entire PCA league as of now. Imran too bowled one of the best spells I have seen from him.

Ok, just for gags. There were 2 separate incidents of auditory confusions during this period. The first one involved Mansoor and myself. He had one of the towels to wipe the ball before passing it on to the bowler. I was at short-covers and he was at mid-wicket. Whenever the ball would go to the bowler through him, I would loudly tell him to wipe the ball before passing it. And I could only see him walking towards the bowler and passing him the ball without wiping it. I thought maybe I wasn't loud enough, but despite all my efforts at loudness, he wouldn't do it. We later realized that the confusion was because of a communication gap. I was telling him " bowler ko ponch ke ball do". He being a Punjabi of the hardest core, understood ponch (wipe) as pahuch (going near). And so he would just go nearer to the bowler every time.

The other one was involving Arpit. During my spell I noticed him calling me (he calls me Bhaiya or big brother) from the outfield every time after my delivery. I looked at him and he would either turn away or look as if he never called me. I just continued bowling. Later he was shouting Bhaiya even when others were bowling and I was just fielding somewhere. This time he wasn't even looking at me at times. Later I realized he was always shouting Badiya (well done) all this while.

Anyways, after all these confusions, we started the chase. The target was tricky but with our Asghar-powered lineup, we were confident of chasing it down easily.

Y. Bhatti went to open with Ahsan. After a couple of glorious shots, Bhatti got out to a strange chip shot. I joined Ahsan and we took the score to nearly 60ish before Ahsan too got out. MD came in at 2-down but got out almost immediately. Arpit was sent 3-down and both of us played for some time. I was hitting the ball nicely but after a knock of another 35+ but (below 50), I yorked myself on a loopy legspin ball. The man, the Asghar went next but the bowler did not seem too worried and kept bowling similar loopy balls. Ignorance does cost a lot at times. A few hits from the in-form batsman and the game was over in a couple of minutes.

A good overall performance, strong with both bat and the ball gave Gladiators their 5th win in 6 matches.

My batsman of the match: Mudit/Asghar

My fielder of the match: Afzal (when you don't notice a keeper, you know its a job well done)

My bowler of the match: Mohsin

My man of the match: Mohsin

Game #5: Gladiators def Strikers by 3 wkts

The second match that I missed because of my vacation. And what a match it was. I missed one of the the most devastating and demoralizing innings ever played in PCA tournaments. Chasing 186, Gladiators slumped to 64/6 in some 15 overs. And then 95/7.

But it was a 34 ball unbeated century by the man in form - Asghar with good support from Mohsin at the other end, which took the score past 185 with 2 overs to spare.

Details later...

My bowler of the match: Mohsin/Mansoor/Imran

My batsman of the day: Asghar

My man of the match: The centurion for his 100* of 34 balls

Game #4: Gladiators lost to Blitzers by 3 wkts

This was the first of the two matches in which I was out of town. Unfortunately, Gladiators tasted their first defeat of the tournament because of a batting collapse and despite a spirited bowling fightback. The details of the match would be provided soon ...

My bowler of the day: Mansoor/Imran

My batsman of the day: Sameer

My man of the match: -