Niagara Cricket Club city league team posts a superb win over Cambridge Cricket Club last Sunday at Cambridge. After a long and hard pre-season fitness and training for 6weeks i.e. at the indoor nets and few warm up games at Ridley College, a balanced and well knit team of 12 traveled to Cambridge to compete for the season opening H&D League game. The hard work paid off as Niagara Cricket Club won the match quite comprehensively. The major credit and contribution of the decisive win in the H&D league game goes to well deserving STC bowlers – especially to the attack of absolutely outstanding bowling by Ash Jhanji.

 

The toss winning hosting team of Cambridge elected to bat first with the hopes to put a big total on an un-predictable pitch. Cambridge opened their batting with Don Watts and Stewart Cullen. Fardeen Aziz from Niagara Cricket Club started the attack and let the opening batsmen know the intentions of STC right from the beginning with his swinging yorkers and accurate line and length. However, the major dent happened when Cambridge lost both opening batsmen in the hands of Ash Jhanji, doing his usual in-cutters attack from the other end. Jhanji clean bowled Stewart Cullen while Don Watts was given out LBW, both only scoring one run each, loosing their wickets to Ash Jhanji.

 

After the opening batsmen out for a total score of only 4 on the board, the land slide of Cambridge batting started with Leslie Adams, Neville McCollin and S. Parsad all went out for “0”. Patrick Wright added another 5 runs before loosing his wicket. By this time the tail end of the batting order was exposed and Gary Corbin, Leroy Tootman, Vince Ford and Don Campbell all went out without making into the double figures. Cambridge team posted only a total of 38 runs on the board – their lowest ever total in the recent history. Fardeen Aziz with 3 and Ash Jhanji with 5 were the leading wicket takers for Niagara Cricket Club while Bilal Akhtar and Warna Peiris took one wicket each.

 

Chasing a lowest total ever of 39 runs to win, Niagara Cricket Club opened batting with Warna Peris and Rizwan Aslam. Warna was out without scoring and Bilal Akhtar joined Rizwan. Akhtar, batting sensibly, got on with his game without any delay and started to tear Cambridge bowling apart. He hit 3 fours and one huge sixer in his inning of 20. Imran Aslam, joining at #4, also batted well and made his mark by hitting a well timed sixer on the last and winning stroke to bring the game home to St.Catharines.

 

Niagara Cricket city league team now travels to Hamilton to play Crescent Cricket Club this Sat June 3th.

The league squad of 17 selected players for 2006 season include Tan Qureshi (Capt), Javed Mian (V. Capt.), Grupreet Singh, Warna Peiris, Nasir Mahmood, Ash Jhanji, Bilal Akhtar, Imran Aslam, Protul Shrikanth, Tawab Ikram, Rizwan Aslam, Humayun Ikram, Verun Sheth, Adeel Khan, Amit Sharma, Fardeen Aziz and Omair Khan.