SCCG®: Play Green, Play for our Future

#sccgcricket #ACAT20League #intothefinals

On 13.09.2020, the SCCG travelled to Seebarn early in the morning for the semifinal 1 match against VCC in their first ever ACA T20 appearance. The VCC had won 6 out of their 7 league matches and was Ranked 1, while the SCCG was ranked 4th with just 4 wins out of 7 matches in the league stage of the ACA T20 Division 2 league. In their previous encounter, the VCC had won easily against the SCCG by 62 runs at the same ground and thus had an obvious advantage over the SCCG on sunday. The SCCG won the toss and elected to bat first.

The SCCG started the innings at a slow but consistence pace, but the lost two early wickets within the powerplay. However, Jimmy was as dependable as ever, and was scoring boundaries at regular intervals, keeping the run rate above par. The VCC bowlers Mark and Wali bowled consistently to the SCCG batsmen, keeping a very tight line and length within the power play. Eventually, the biggest partnership of the SCCG that stabilized the scoreboard was between Jimmy and Karthik. Jimmy dealt in boundaries while Karthik scored the ones and twos. The two put up 44 runs on the board in 4.4 overs, with karthik getting out in the end. Jimmy went on to score 63 runs of 49 balls, and Karthik 23 of 20 balls. The runs started slowing down until shoaib came on to the center and scored 19 runs of just 8 balls with a flurry of boundaries. Eventually, the SCCG wickets kept falling, and were bowled out by an excellent death over spell by Mark where he claimed three wickets in two overs. The SCCG had put up a total of 138/10 in 19 overs.

With a target of 139 to defend, the SCCG bowlers Shoaib and Adil started off amazingly well, bowling with considerable pace and accuracy, and managing to restrict the VCC batsmen to just 44 runs in the power play. As usual, Shirzad also bowled with amazing grace, and impeccable line and length, building up the pressure on the VCC batsmen. Jimmy and Raman brought back their magical spin spell, and the VCC wickets kept falling at regular intervals. Also to mention the amazing fielding by all SCCG palyers on the field – this helped bring in three runouts and helped the bowlers a lot to maintain and increase the pressure on the opponent. Special mention to the keeper Vikram, Saeed, Pratik, Waqas and Pradeep who put exceptional effort on the field. The only VCC batsmen to spend time on the field were Mark with 33 runs, Quinton with 16 runs and Philip with 18 runs. At the end, when the VCC required 25 runs of 2 overs, the SCCG was penalized 5 runs for slow over-rate, which made the match more close. UFF!
Eventually, the SCCG bowled out the VCC for 129 in the last over, thus winning the semifinal match by 9 runs.

The SCCG will now play against the SLCV in the finals on the 19th September 2020.

As always, special mention and thanks to the SCCG supporters Supriya, Seema, Akash (player) and Shyam (player) who followed the match online and cheered for every SCCG run scored and wicket taken (~300 messages), and also Gulfam for driving all the way to Seebarn to support and help us out! We are also thankful for our sponsors Granola (https://www.granola-company.at/) for their support on the wonderful SCCG kits.