Div 2 Round 18: Aliens vs Alna
When: Stubberudmyra
Where: 23 September
Alna Team A 148/7 (25.0 ov)
Aliens Cricket Club 134/7 (25.0 ov)
Alna Cricket Club - Won by 14 runs
Background:
Aliens v Alna on 23 Sep was the last game for the year 2017 CE for both the teams. There was a lot riding on this game. If Aliens won comprehensively, Aliens had a chance to end up at 5thor 6th position in Division 2, if Alna won they would stay in Div 2 and Minhaj, a lesser team would be relegated to Div 3. So there were several cricketers from Minhaj rooting for Aliens out of choice. They ended up staying till the 4th over of the Aliens batting innings. Why did they leave? Read the whole damn report.
Impatient? Jump to the Standings at the end of this game and season.
There was a tremendous push by the team management to get the Aliens team members to compile the match reports in a couple of days after the game, as there was a plethora of pending reports due to lack of interest or general laziness on the part of the cricketers. So for the last game the team management rightly chose the man who could rescue the team with the last match report, if not on the field! The name is Kish.
Aliens Bowling:
Aliens Cricket Club won the toss and elected to Bowl in the Ikea ground. National cricketer and captain for the game, Damon started off the proceedings with a tight first over. Due to lack of medium pacers in this particular game, Benan was tasked with the 2nd over. But he was taken apart for 13runs which included 3 wides as wayward as the dance moves in the currently top trending dance number in Kerala(a)! If keen take a look at the moves here: YouTube.
Arif was asked to step in as the 2nd spearhead for the game and ‘’boy o boy’’ he did more than a real spearhead would have done with his Chris Harris style medium pace darts. This is the tightest spell one could have witnessed, 5overs for 10 runs and 3 crucial wickets. The economy rate was a measly 2/over. Easily a man of the match performance, if Aliens had won. Read through to learn if Aliens won the game!
Arif’s 3 crucial wickets were picked up with 2 nice catches from David at mid-on to identical deliveries and one decent reflex catch from Simon, who was keeping close to the wkts. In one of Arif’s over chaos took over, the event goes like this: the Alna batsman edged an on-point deilivery from Arif, Simon missed the quick reflex catch, Assad manages to get to the ball at short third man and accomplishes a throw to the keeper. In the meantime both the batsmen end up in the keepers end. It should have been an easy-peasy run out that would have made up for the drop…but wait for it… Simon’s underarm throw was so messed up that it did not reach the other end and so is Chris’s clean up from silly mid off and Arif could not have done much either as the batsman made it to the other end amidst 4 fielders trying (or not trying!) to get him out.
Then the Aliens spinning trio (Chris, David & Santha) were brought in to cover the middle overs. Chris had a couple of drops with Benan dropping a straight hit at cover of the top scoring batsman. Chris was the pick among the trio in this game, who started off with tight overs and with the help of Marcus’ high catch in deep mid-wicket picked up the wicket of a slogging Alna batsmen, who took him out for a big six earlier.
Santha started off with a couple of Yorkers, which on any given day is a nice start…only thing is he almost yorked himself and not the batsman! David was taken for two huge hits in a row, with one unfortunate catch becoming a six as the skipper stepped on the ropes while taking a nice high catch at long on. Assad dropped a sitter at short third man off David, although he made it up at the same position with a diving catch, couple of deliveries later fetching David a wkt. Kishore also missed a straight projectile from the Alna batsman even after 3 attempts at it.
The skipper missed a trick in the game, the weather was conducive for Marcus’s stump to stump shafts or even Kishore’s medium pace sliders. Benan was asked to bowl the penultimate over and he did manage to bowl the batsman out making it a comeback over (compared to his first). Alna climbed up to 148 at the end of 25overs which was 25 runs above par.
Aliens Batting:
In the initial overs, Assad was bowled and Simon was caught behind. This time there was not a Standup comedy show for Simon to attend! As soon as both the openers were dismissed the Minhaj cricketers who were sitting in the gallery realized that their fate is sealed and they will be relegated, left the ground with disappointment. Read through to check if Aliens proved them wrong and kept them in the division, eliminating Alna.
Allrounders David and Damon had a good partnership each scoring a thirty keeping the Aliens hope alive until David perished in the 17th. Damon was now batting with Santha and were looking good with a couple of boundary hits. But the running was a train wreck waiting to happen and it did happen. The ball was slogged for a couple, Santha was running his first slow and in the end was one short, in the course to regain the run, tried the 2nd time to go back to the crease, still was one short. Damon was already running his second, so Santha had to readjust his thinking and started to run the 2nd but in vain. He was not even in the frame when he was run out, in the process Aliens losing both the crucial runs on this ball.
Alna also had a few drops in their bowling attempt. Now Damon was batting with the tail which meant another run out was in the offing. To top it off Benan declined an easy two leaving the skipper fuming, in the process Damon took the frustration on the bowler with a big six over square leg. The very next over, Damon was caught behind. The train wreck continued with Inzamam-ish running between Chris and Benan, forcing another runout.
With two overs to spare it was an impossible task for the tail to hit 23. Aliens mustered less than a run a ball in the last 12 (8runs to be precise) to lose the last game by 14runs.
Aliens were below the rate only from the 21st over, so in a way one could say that Aliens lost the game in the last 5overs. Check out the run worm.