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
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