To be in the hunt for the Platinum / Gold group, Hawkes needed to win the match against Cosmos by a margin of 20+ run if batting first, or chase down the opponents’ score in 16-odd overs.
Cosmos won the toss and decided to field first. This was a negative from Hawkes’ perspective, as we prefer chasing in our important matches.
Sarbajeet and Piyush started the innings for Hawkes. Sarbajeet played out the first over without any trouble; 3 runs came from wides. Piyush was out on the 2nd ball of the 2nd over with a sharp catch in the cover-point region. Sarbajeet and Kartik then had a 10-run partnership; until Sarbajeet was out caught-behind at the end of the 4th over. Hawkes was at a precarious 16 runs for 2 wickets at the end of 5 overs. In came Pranai and had a very fruitful partnership of 50 odd runs with Katik. Hawkes went into the 10-over break with supreme confidence as we were at a comfortable 48 for 2 after 10 overs.
The onslaught from Pranai and Kartik continued after the break with some intelligent hitting from Pranai and beautiful milking of the bowling from Kartik. The partnership was broken against the run of play when Kartik edged behind for a well-made 17 (24). Pranai continued from the other end and scored 34 (44) before getting out to a blinder at square-leg. The rest of the Hawkes team batters contributed towards getting a good total for Hawkes. Special mention to Amar [11(14)] for a straight six over long-on and Venki [5(6)] for the hoicked boundary over square-leg.
Hawkes ended their batting at a challenging 107 runs for the loss of 9 wickets.
The Hawkes bowlers practiced on the pitch during the mid-innings break so as to get their line right. Hawkes was confident that with no extras and no dropped catches, we would be able to restrict Cosmos to a reasonable score thus bumping up our DRR.
Hawkes’ bowling started off on a disastrous note with Chai sending down the first three deliveries of the innings as leg-side wides. Cosmos ended the first over at 7 runs for 0 wickets. Piyush then bowled a good over and also induced an edge from their opener but Sarbajeet was unable to hold on to the sharp chance. The dropped opener was unable to do much damage as he was dismissed in the next over to a good catch by Venki at long-off in Chai’s bowling. The 1-drop batsman did not trouble the scorer and was out in Piyush’s 2nd over giving a catch to Anil at deep square-leg. Cosmos was at 16 runs for 2 wickets at the end of 4 overs. Overs 5 to 10 were extremely bad from Hawkes’ perspective as a lot of runs were scored by Cosmos. The major culprit in the large amount of runs is the number of extras (leg-side wides) we gave in this period. Cosmos went into the 10 over break at a comfortable 57 runs for 2 wickets.
Hawkes’ came out with a new-found resolve after the break and bowled and fielded their hearts out. We kept on getting consistent breakthroughs; and kept Cosmos scoring on a tight leash. The highlight of this period was the superb catch diving forward taken by Kartik at long-off. In the end, it came down to 14 runs needed by Cosmos off the last over bowled by Sankar. Here is the ball-by ball update of the last over:
1st Ball: pulled over mid wicket for 2 runs. The throw from Pranai came one-bounce to the keeper allowing the batsman to complete the 2nd run.
2nd Ball: Big 6 over long-on
3rd Ball: Pulled over mid-wicket for 4. Now 2 runs were required off 3 balls
4th Ball: Dot Ball
5th Ball: Dot Ball
6th Ball: Pulled over mid-wicket for 4 runs
Hawkes lost the game off the last ball. All-in-all, a good effort from all the players, but we came up short.
Highlights of the day:
- Innings: Pranai for his 34(44)
- Shot: Amar’s six over long-on
- Catch: Kartik for his stunner at long-off
- Spell: Piyush for his 4 overs - 10 runs and 1 wicket
- Fielding: Purab for his fine effort in the short-thirdman region
