U17 – May 9th – Kampong Vs Excelsior

It was a glorious weather for the start of the season! Kampong won the toss and given the dry conditions of the pitch, Gijs the captain, chose to bat first. Aryan and Omkar opened the innings and immediately took the Excelsior bowlers to the cleaners! With a run rate of 6 an over the opening pair provided a solid platform for first 12 overs. Then Omkar departed for a well made 28. Wickets fell on regular intervals but Aryan held the fort at the other end and departed with a inspiring score of 55. Gijs found the boundary a few times and Praveen batted extremely well to revive the innings – both scoring 13 runs. Mees hung around for a while to stabilize the ship at that point.  Siddharth and Ashmit had a good exposure of batting in U17. Jishnu middled quite a few to add to the tally. Raj and Vedanth did their best to make the tail wag a bit. In the end Kampong was all out for a respectable 143 in 28 overs. 

It was a par score for that pitch and all what we needed was some quick wickets. But Excelsior openers batted with intent and were looking to threaten going well over 6 runrate in the first 4 overs. Then Vedanth provided the crucial break through in the 5th over with two wickets in succession. Gijs kept bowling with good pace on the other end. There was only one noteworthy partnership after that, which was ended by Omkar. After this Praveen and Aryan bowled very economically. Overall, Kampong’s fielding and bowling was tight in the middle overs putting the pressure on the batsmen.  All this triggered a collapse very soon. Three wickets fell in two overs of Raj – one of them, a quick fire runout with some nimble glove work by Mees behind the stumps. Samanyu came in, bowled well and turned his over into a maiden wicket. Aryan took two wickets in succession in the 19th which finished Excelsior’s innings. Six wickets fell very quickly in the span of 5 overs and they were bundled out with 12 overs to go. This rapid collapse with so many overs to spare also meant not all our bowlers had the opportunity to bowl!

Positives – Great opening batting partnership, quick wickets, sharp fielding. 

Areas of improvement – Bat out the 30 overs, Keep the energy up in the field, reduce wides. 

Special thanks to our U15 team members – Ashmit, Samanyu and Siddharth who filled in for our player-shortage today. 

Overall, a great winning start to the season, hopefully we can keep up the momentum. Well done boys!