Despite a fighting all-round display by Keyur Moradia, Warriors CC prevailed thanks to a brilliant Six-studded knock by Saulat Abbas thus registering their first win in the R.P. Singh Memorial cup in a game filled with twists & turns.
TKC Mavs won the toss and elected to bowl first but Nitin Sharma set the early pace for the Warriors with a breezy 36 that included 4 sixes to get his team off to a good start. Nimesh Shah accounted for Nitin Sharma and another Nitin, this time Nitin Asija struck with two wickets in his first over to bring TKC Mavs back into the game. But, then, Saulat Abbas got into the six hitting zone hitting 8 of them as he raced to 65 of just 37 balls as things suddenly looked ominous for TKC Mavs with the Warriors racing to 124 for 3 at the end of the 13th over.
Another twist followed as Samir Sharma accounted for the dangerous Saulat and a superb 17th over by Keyur Moradia where he took 2 wickets for just 1 run ensured that Warriors could only muster 30 runs in their last 7 overs. A remarkable come-back considering how ominous Saulat & Nitin Sharma were looking!
The TKC Mavs chase of 155 started disastrously as they lost both the openers for just 9 runs. Keyur Moradia then got into the rescue act putting on a 57 run stand with Nitin Asija and then a 36 run stand with Gorav Pathak to set it up nicely for his team as they needed to get 53 runs in the last 5 overs. Gorav & Padmakar rattled up 42 runs in the next four overs and they now needed 11 runs of the final over with Paddy, the hero of the previous match on strike. In the final twist of the game, the usually big hitting Paddy couldn’t get Ahmad Abbas Khan away as he gave only 2 runs for 2 wickets in a brilliant, match-winning final over of a highly engrossing game.
