After a disappointing start to the season with two rained out games, weather gods finally gave Niagara Cricket B much needed respite to have its first game playing Oakville B at Glen Ashton Park. Winning the toss, Niagara Cricket B elected to bat first with Gurpal Sandhu (Doc!), Ashwani Jhanjhi (Ash) and Manpreet Gill(Mani) making handsome contributions with their 30s. However, highlight of the innings and the match was a blistery 155 run partnership between Zeeshan Arshad (74) & Fardeen Aziz (79) that helped Niagara Cricket B finish their innings with highest innings total thus by far in HDCL of 308 runs in 40 overs. The Niagara Cricket B innings featured 16 x 4s and 23 x 6s, with almost half of them coming from the long boundary at Oakville ground.
Niagara Cricket B’s bowling innings was started by a fiery spell by Sandeep Gill (Sunny) whose speed and accuracy had no answer from Oakville B’s top order batsmen. Ash Jhanjhi brought in as the first change bowler, cleaned up the top 3 batsmen of Oakville B with his super line and length ending his spell of 5 overs for 3 wickets giving away just 10 runs. He was supported well by Zeeshan Arshad bowling a disciplined line manner looking sharp from the other end. This was followed up by a 73 run stand by the middle order batsmen of Oakville. A catch chance for Majid of Khaled Ansari’s bowling was missed by Mani who didn’t take long to make amends with a instantaneous direct hit at the stumps from long on to run out Srini at the non striker’s end. Nitin Sareen followed this up by a 4 wicket haul to wrap up the Oakville B innings for 176 giving Niagara Cricket a 132 run win!!! In summary, a great team effort for a well deserved win! The fielding effort of Niagara Cricket was a bit scratchy with a few drops and misses but showed signs of promise as the game went along.
For compete scorecard of the game, visit statistics section of HDCL website or click:
http://www.cricketstar.net/hdcl/index.jsp?form=matchrev&r=matchrev&game_number=63&season_id=2011
Niagara Cricket B is scheduled to host Oakville B on 18th June at Glen Ashton Park as our home ground NCC (Niagara Cricket Centre) is still under completion.