Niagara Cricket Club, Aug 21, 2006 Niagara Cricket Club managed to win a tense and competitive match against Cambridge CC last weekend to confirm its spot in the district league playoffs. Cambridge CC, an unbeaten team during the entire 2006 season, suffered their first loss at Ridley last Sunday in a high scoring match. .

The match between Niagara Cricket Club and Cambridge CC started with Niagara Cricket Club winning the toss and electing to bat first. Tan Qureshi and Varna Peiris opened the batting for the local city club. Cambridge made an early break through as Qureshi was given out LBW. Varna was joined by Adeel Khan and the both batted sensibly to bring the score to 66 in the first 12 overs. Varna made 29 while Adeel scored 30. Nasir Mahmood scoring the highest with 52 runs established key partnerships with Protul Shrikant and Billy Akhtar. With score reaching at 160 in the 37th over Gurpreet Singh joined Billy to capitalize the final overs. Gurpreet, scoring 3 huge sixes and quick running between the wickets made the most significant difference at the end as he remained not out at 40, scored in only 26 balls while Niagara Cricket Club reached a mounting total of 229 to end their batting innings.

In reply, Cambridge batted well in the middle order and did not seem threatened by the mounting target of 229 set on board by St. Catharines. At one point, batting at 169 CCC appeared well set to chase the target . The match was slipping away from the grips of Niagara Cricket Club as Abdullah, a key batsman for Cambridge hit a number of sixes to Niagara Cricket Club bowlers. However, after Abdullah being bowled by Nasir Mahmood, the game came to a quick end with Cambridge getting all out for 178 i.e. short of 51 runs. Gurpreet Singh and Varna took 2 wickets each while Adeel, Ash, Nasir and Bilal captured one each.