Through to the Finals

This tournament had started atleast 4 months back. We had a decent run in the tournament — the only real embarassment coming in the last match of the league stage — a dead rubber against a team named Super 11. They had a 2-3 Division II players. We lost the match quite badly. It has taken another couple of months for the organisers to organise the semifinals after that match.

Our semifinal came against the very team we had lost to — the Super 11. This is the time for the payback. Winning the toss, we took the usual route of setting the target. We tested a new opening pair in Suman and Hariprasad. That paid off quite well. The opening partnership of 65 runs in about 10 overs laid a good foundation as well as set a new record (in the partnership for the 1st wicket) in the short history of Freshdesk Cricket.

As we were setting our eyes on target around 140, the middle order failed to capitalize on the great start provided. The next 30 runs came at a cost 8 wickets. The lone warrior in this stretch being Ram. With just around 10 more balls to go, he had to depart being run out by some bad calling in the middle. Pradeep provided the much needed last minute momentum taking us to 115 runs by the end of 20 overs.

115 was a well defendable total for our bowling attack, at the same time their top order batsmen are the same Division II players who had tormented us in the previous match. Ezakhi started off with the new ball, with 15 runs plundered in the first 5 balls, he took the wicket in the last ball to compensate all of that. The next over also produced a wicket at the expense of just 4 more runs.

With both the openers dismissed, the energy was soaring, but the next pair cemented their stand, made us run all around the ground with the score touching around 60 runs with a very brisk run rate hovering around 10 always. Now came Hari, the top scorer of the match. His first over brought the crucial breakthrough and Pradeep’s next over continued the trend. Between them they took 6 quick wickets in the next 6 overs.

It was just a matter of cleaning up the tail now but they did frustrate us for a while. Ezakhi coming back finished them off paving way to our the first ever finals of a Cricket Tournament for Freshdesk. The allround performances from Hari and Pradeep have taken us here.

And now the finals is against the team — Gladiators — Another team we had lost to. Time to make some more amends.