Div 2 Round 10: Aliens vs Inter Lions
When: 20 July
Where: Rommen
Inter Lions Cricket Club Inter Lions 249/2 (30.0 ov)
Aliens Cricket Club 140/10 (21.3 ov)
Inter Lions Cricket Club - Won by 109 runs
With a few losses in the T20 NM cup, Aliens were all pumped up to reverse the trend and resume the winning ways against Inter Lions. Weather was perfect and Aliens as usual were basking under the sun with their warm-up drills sans 1 or 2 who had their own techniques to ‘warm-up’!
With the scheduled start being held up due to the non-availability of the second umpire which is kind of becoming the norm for Aliens games these days, there was more time to soak in the pre- match drills.
Dennis won the toss and decided to bowl. Damon scalped the first one pretty quick and the second one followed soon after with the ‘only’ ball of his season (as quoted by Benan himself). The Inter lions batsmen at the crease started to put up a partnership slowly and steadily. As much as the Aliens bowlers were trying hard, every over had one or two of those ‘Hit-me’ balls which didn’t serve much to our cause. The partnership flourished amidst some boundary line banter (read it as more than banter ) between Benan and Interlions players. It was reported to the umpire and Interlions captain during the drinks break.
The Interlions batmen continued to get into Aliens bowlers and more sixes rained to put them up for a strong finish. One of the batsmen got his century and the other his half century. They ended up with a pretty impressive 249 for 2 in their 30 overs.
The M&Ms opened the batting for Aliens. Mitch departed first and Marcus then was run out. The Dependable Double-Dees (Damon and Dennis) at the crease started to accumulate some runs before Damon miscued a pull to short fine leg. Damage was done both to Aliens and to Damon’s pad/bat which received a few whacks from him after getting out. There was not much more significant contribution from the batters thereafter with batsmen falling to indecisive running and poor selection of shots. Exception being Denis who played a lone hand and missed another well deserved fifty by 3 runs. Some eye catching boundaries were the highlight of his innings.
Just to add some drama to the centre, the aliens had enough of the Interlions keeper ‘infamous’ technique of hiding the ball and pretending to have mis-fielded leading to the run out chances of batsmen.. Volleys of choicest words were heard around Rommen and they were certainly not ‘Shabbaaa...or, yeh cheez hai’ .. Nevertheless, game resumed and the aliens walk back to the hut resumed as well, eventually ending up at sub 150 score making it a heavy loss.
As much as the result was something to be forgotten soon, the day itself had plenty of highlights: The Diva look alike pose of Devaraj which was caught on camera and captioned by Peter.. it has all the chances to make it to the Aliens website..
Benan’s realisation that he may actually need some yoga lessons .. Breathe in... Breathe out.. Breathe in.. Breathe out... Christopher Hulme, the Aliens nutritionist kept the spirits and energy level of the players high with his shopping bag of ice creams, coke and water. It was Nuggatti chocolate tubes, the last time he played...
The pre-match prediction of Denis that Rommen is a happy hunting ground for the evil spirits resulting in injuries to Aliens came true with a bruised finger to the one who is typing this, without the use of it...
And to top it, the scorecard of this game is missing on Cric HQ !!!
