Mar21-2010 Engineers started season on a winning note

By Raju.....
As this was the first match happening under lights, engineers esthetically reached the new Koga ground at 3:00PM on a quite uncomfortable weather, its windy and chilly than expected. The tigers reached the at 4:00PM, and quickly found the incompatibility between the mat and the ground soil. After some brainstorming sessions, our curator Dinesh took the lead in installing the pitch on new ground. Coin has been tossed after a delay of an hour, the tiger's leader called the wrong side of the coin, which leads to engineer’s openers to walk towards the pitch with bat. Cool headed Masood opened the innings with veteran opener Santosh. Things went good until Masood got out. Dinesh walked in as a replacement, and the engineer’s camp looks comfortable as the last years leading run scorer took the charge of rolling the score card. Soon he returned back after an LBW decision. On the other side, Santosh keep ticking the score. The new man PK looked pretty comfortable, but soon got run out. Raju walked in as a replace to him, a blow to engineers camp in the form of Santosh wicket. A pretty good half volley delivery, scattered the midwicket. By this time the score is 56/5. Situation looks quite similar to last seasons KCL league match with same counterparty. The young blood and the new vice captain walked in his style, as the back ground voices echoed as "GUYS DON'T LET THE LAST YEAR'S KCL STITATION REPAT AGAIN". They keep up their word, after a partnership of 30 runs Raju fell to an Yorker. By this time Anurag gave full thrust to the score card. The captain Sanjeeb joined him and made some valuable runs before returning back after a cough and bowl event occurrence. Bikash replaced him in order to give some strong support to Anurag, as he is one of the stake holder in high score partnerships. This time the partnership didn't go good. Biju replace him, after few runs contribution, Anurag fell in the process of accelerating the score as the innings reaching the final phase. Engineers scored 133 runs after getting all out in 24 overs in very unplayable conditions.



After a few minutes break tigers walked in, in-order to hunt down the 134 in 27 overs. Though the figures looks achievable, the path towards that looks not that easy at the end. The valuable weapon in our arsenal, with a perfect text book bowling action (Rajeesh) started the bowling attack, the very first one went like a rocket juts like on Koiwa pitch, which we haven't seen in our day's play until then. According to strategy, along with our veteran seam bowler Biju the pair has to damage or put the tigers on back foot. Biju took the first wicket and a lots of convincing shouts turned out against Rajeesh. After encouraging new talented players with the bowl, the captain thought its time to bring in Anurag. Due to leg strain, captain replaced him in the attack. The real Tiger’s down fall started as the ball came in to the hands of Dinesh. He cleaned the tiger’s middle orde. After Dinesh and Raju restricted the tigers from scoring in a log stretch of 12 overs, the asking rate has been climbed up for tigers. At the end Rajeesh, Anurag and Shailaj cleaned up the rest of the list and recorded the first win of this season just before the lights gone off at 21:00Hrs.

Key Points:



1. Ground is great. Playing cricket under lights is amazing, thanks to all stake holder in this initiation. A flix pitch may make it more interesting.

[Return driving to Tokyo just takes one hour, could not able to evaluate the time taken from Tokyo to Koga as we caught up in some unexpected traffic]

2. Though the playing conditions in the first half are unplayable, the bats men managed to score 133.Anurag and Santhosh contributions are impressive.

3. Bowling department: bowlers did good job in restricting the tigers.

4. Ground fielding is good, but we managed to miss few catches which my go costly in other situations. [As we all know this is a well known and well repeated statement :)]

5. Special thanks to new comer Shailaj who bowling the last over under pressure took the last Tigers wicket just before the lights went out to hand over the first win of the Season to IECC

6.Biju took the first wicket of the season, way to go President!

7. Dinesh took 5 wicket for just 13 runs to destroy Tigers middle order. Raju providing support from the other end.

8. Anurag top scored with 41 runs and hit few towering sixes. Santosh scored a patient 19.