20th June 2009- IECC Bounces back in style beating Tigers by huge margin

IECC won the toss and elected to bat first.
Tigers opening bowlers bowled beautifully and some accurate swing bowling and athletic fielding quickly saw IECC top and middle order relaxing back in the tree-shade.

At 36/6 by the end of the 6th over, IECC was at real risk of getting all out(or eaten alive) without posting a challenge total to the Tigers, a situation which got IECC president Biju and Vice Captain Bobby really worried.There was more than a loss at stake. Had IECC lost the game and got allout scoring their lowest score of the season both of them would have lost their rights to visit Nishi-Kasai, known as the den of the Tigers.

But the young stars of IECC, Raju and Anurag, who have certainly matured a lot over these years, had a different plan in mind. The 151 run partnership in the 7th wicket nearly killed the Tigers.

Raju initially started with caution, contrary to his nature, but soon got going with a huge 6 over midwicket. His 66 included as many as 5 towering sixes and 4 boundaries.Anurag initially concentrated on feeding the strike to Raju and taking risks only to bad deliveries. But after the 100 run partnership Anurag also became agressive and started hitting boundaries almost at will. His 76 included 1 towering six over midwicket and as many as 12 boundaries. It was really a treat to watch both of them batting in tandem, neutralizing the Tigers attack and saving IECC the blues.

Tigers chasing 232 to win crumbled under pressure and the pace of Dinesh , Anurag and Raju proved too much for them. Dinesh was pick of the IECC bowlers taking 3 wickets for 29.

This win should go a long way boosting IECC's moral after suffering back to back losses in their last two KCL games.

Brief scorecard..
IECC 231/10 in 35.3 overs, Raju (66), Anurag (76), Anil 4/19
Tigers 119/10 in 26.5 overs, Udayraj (23), Dinesh(3/29)

18 Jun 2009- IECC lost one of their very bests

Vimal who played for IECC about 8 years had been a key member of the squad. Apart from being a rock solid opener he was a very good bowler and fielder. Also he was a very good friend and his gentle , friendly and selfless natures had made him really popular within the team. His 156* against Kytes is among one of the most memorable innings he has played for IECC.

He will be soon moving to Denmark on his new job assignment. IECC is hopeful that he will be back in Japan sometime in future and will be again playing for us.

Here are few pictures from the farewell party.

14th June - Photographs

14th June 2009- Depleted IECC Lost to Kytes

We won the toss and decided to bat first.

But we could only manage to score 124 before getting allout by the 30th over. Note here that we didn't have our full team and both our star openers were not playing this game.

Kytes bowled beautifully and took some acrobatic catches. On the other hand poor runing between the wickets didn't help IECC much, we again had couple of runouts.

At one stage we were 49/6.
But thanks to our VC Bobby , batting at no 3, he kept his calm and kept his wicket at one end and played almost 25 overs hitting some sublime boundaries in the process.

Atul played beautifully opening for IECC for the first time he scored 25 before getting out to a supurb low catch by one of the atheletic Srilankan fielders.

Silverster playing after a long layoff also batted beautifully and remained not out on 28 and some useful contributions from Jagan and Biju helped us go past 120.

While bowling we tried with everything we had, but the Kytes were not taking too many risks as we kept giving extras and the score was not a too chalenging one.

Dinesh took 2 wickets in 2 balls when the score was around 50 to give us some hope. But we could not manage any quick wickets after that and the game slowly drifted away from us.

Towards the end Biju bowled a gem of a delivery to get rid of inform Kytes batsman Mewan but it was too late by then.

Final score
IECC 124/9 in 32.3 Overs
Atul 25, Bobby 23, Silvi 26*, Arbab 3/31
Kytes 125/5 in 25.3 Overs
Chamberlain 29, Mewan 22, Neil 19*, Dinesh 3/19