The Falcons brought a lot of interest to Game 15 of the Arizona Cricket Association 2017 season on November 12, 2017 by losing wickets in a heap, leaving the lower order batsmen and tail-enders to take them over the line as the daylight seemed very minuscule for the last few overs of the game.
The game started off on a partly cloudy day at the Chapparal Elementary. The Falcons coming in to their fourth game of the season with victories in all of their past three games, winning by 176 runs, 116 runs and 244 runs respectively. The Titans would have been determined to get a win under their belt, given the fate that they met in just their previous game against the Falcons when the game slipped from their hands with a few bad umpiring decisions going against them.
The Falcons started off with leaking a few boundaries in the first few overs. But, the control was immediately arrested when opening bowler, Abhishiktha Tummala, picked up wickets of the Titans' captain Vikram Sivakumar and Amit Rajula, the second with an incredible catch of his own bowling, diving on a muddy pitch away from his follow through. As Harsh Mistry and Mukund Manikarnike came on as first and second change bowlers, Harsh was able to keep things tight on the one end while Mukund leaked runs through extras releasing some of the pressure that the two early on wickets created.
With Aditya Londhe as the premier off-spinner and fifth bowler, the captain, Chinmay Dekhne was forced to turn to the sixth bowler, Srinath Murali for some help in getting some of the control that was lost earlier. At the end of the 15th over, the Titans found themselves at a decent score of 3/68 when Aditya, Harsh and Srinath would bowl overlapping spells as Titans ticked the scoreboard along well enough at a run rate of 4.74 after 19 overs when middle order batsman, Shiv Raj lobbed up a simple catch to Srinath at Covers.
The Falcons seemed to have brought advantage back home half way through the innings. However, Amit Mishra coming in at No. 6 had other intentions whacking his first ball of the innings and the first after the break over deep midwicket for a six. But, he didn't last long when he tried one too many of those shots when a partnership was the need of the hour for the Titans, getting too much air-time, but not distance allowing Govind Lal to take a stunner running in from long off leaving the score at 5/111 after 22.2 overs. The rest of the Titans' innings hinged on one partnership between Akshay Ravindran and Manoj Pokharel. But, when Manoj lobbed up a simple caught and bowled chance to Aditya in the 30th and Akshay who got a half century got bowled off of Raman in the 31st over, the rest of them succumbed to some accurate bowling by Harsh who picked up a very well earned 4 wicket haul leaving the Falcons 190 to get off their 40 overs.
Harsh Mistry (7.2 - 2 - 18 - 4; 2.30)
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| Chinmay Dekhne (73) |
The Falcons sailed through the first 14 overs scoring 0/68 with Chinmay Dekhne and Aditya Londhe on 22* and 34* each. But, the 14th over spelled a slight hiccup for the Falcons when Sriram Potturi picked up a couple of wickets of set batsman, Aditya and new batsman Sriram Murali. Jesal Patel, coming in at No. 4 steadied the ship by putting on 26 runs on the board along with captain Chinmay. But, when Chinmay got out lbw off the bowling of Phaneendra and Jesal lbw off Rahul Reddy, things seemed to slipping if not sliding. However, the Falcons still had some strong technical prowess amidst firepower with Harsh, Mit, Govind and Rajagopal to come. It was at this time when Harsh crunched one which he thought went over deep mid-wicket was actually declared out caught in what seemed like a controversial decision, one in which the Umpire declared a six and reverted his decision.
That was a crucial moment in the game since Mit and Harsh were seeming to get a good partnership going. However, Mit kept going as Raman and Govind walked in and out without ruffling too many feathers as daylight started to seem very minimal. But, when Mit got out bowled off of Arun Mohanty, it meant that had left Rajagopal and the tailenders to take the Falcons to what had seemed like something that the Falcons would cruise to. At 8/182 needing 8 runs off of 4 overs, Abhishiktha was run out off of a brilliant direct hit from Yogesh Aravind from square leg within the circle. Mukund Manikarnike walked in to a lot of chatter from the close-in fielders and advice from his own team-mates with the only job of giving the strike back to Rajagopal. Apart from a loud shout for lbw in the first few balls to what seemed like was something that was slipping down the leg side, there were no concerns as Mukund handed the strike over to Rajagopal who got the winning runs amidst striking one to the boundary relieving some pressure from the Falcons camp bringing a 1 wicket victory home.
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