Deepak earned Man of the Match in Duke Aid Cricket Tournament Final

October 03, 2007

The Winston Warriors Blues led by Balaji Thummalacharla have brought home the runners-up trophy of the Duke AID 2007 Cricket Tournament, claiming the spot of the second-best team from a fray of 36 (!!) teams from all over the South East region.

The team was composed of the captain Balaji, vice captain Prashant Dixit, Raj Mallarapu, Deepesh Naidu, Arun Raghavan, Rahul Mandewalker, Deepak Bhatt and Chandrasekhar Goda.

We started the campaign by polishing off the Morrisville Mavericks, bowling them out for 19 runs and chasing down the target in less than 2 overs. All of the bowlers got a good start with Prashant in particular bowling at top speed and uprooting stumps, well backed up by Deepak and Rahul.

We then doled out almost identical treatment to the UNC Cricket Club again bowling them out for 18 runs and thumping 19 runs in 10 balls. This time Deepak throttled the UNC batsmen, again superbly supported by Prashant, Chandu and Deepesh.

Then we moved on to our last pool game and sternest test in the tournament so far: a match against the SASsy Cricket Club. Cometh the hour, cometh the man and Rahul stepped up to the plate and pummeled the SAS bowlers to all parts raining sixes and fours. He hit five sixes and four fours in his blistering 48 which lifted the total to 77 runs in 5 overs. SAS was never really into the chase after Prashant and Deepak lopped off the top order and then Deepesh snuffed out whatever remaining hope they had with a stunning hat-trick, one of the only two in the entire tournament.

So the Blues topped group G with a cent-per-cent record and moved onto the pre-quarterfinals against our arch-nemesis DCC, the team that beat us in the quarterfinals and knocked us out of the Duke 2006 tournament.

But this time they came up against a fired-up Prashant who bowled with such terrifying pace that the batsmen couldn't even move before the ball crashed into their stumps, and they collapsed to 34 runs in 5 overs, Prashant picking up 4 wickets all clean bowled, which we chased down thanks to a superbly paced innings from Raj, hitting 4 fours and a six in his 23.

The quarterfinals against Super 8 saw Deepesh picking up 2 wickets and Balaji raining sixes at his favorite ground chasing 32 easily.

The semi-finals against Hell Razors, champions in 2005, were a tense affair with us putting a smallish total of 44 runs on the board thanks to a good start by Deepak. But our bowlers led again by Prashant and Deepak defended it like cornered hyenas, never letting the razors out from their hell-hole. They faded eventually to 32 runs giving us victory by 12 runs and entry into the finals of the tournament.

The finals against the Blue Panthers from Atlanta, defending champions from 2006, started on a good note with us winning the toss and inserting them in to bat. Our bowlers were again spot-on and restricted the Panthers to 32 runs, their lowest total in the tournament batting first. Sadly, we found out that their bowlers were just too good. Their opening bowlers restricted us to 10 runs in 3 overs, picking up 3 wickets and we never recovered from that, losing the match by 8 runs. Deepak Bhatt picked up 3 wickets and that was good enough to earn him the Man-of-the-Match award in the bowler-dominated final.

Still, we went to have fun and ended up runners-up in a tournament that had solid teams from all over the South East region and we played as a team coming up with match-winning performances time after time, winning 6 matches back-to-back before coming off second-best in the final.

The Winston Warriors Blacks had a good early-run in the tournament as well, winning 2 of their 3 pool matches by huge margins to top group C on net-run-rate. Their only loss in the pool stages was to DCC in a tight, tense match. The Blues thrashed them soundly a match later extracting sweet revenge. The Blacks were unable to progress past the pre-quarterfinals stage losing to Super 8. But they stayed back until the end of the final match cheering whole-heartedly for the Blues, showing the kind of solidarity that made every other team envious.