With rainy weather forecasted towards the middle of the game, the SCCG played against SEPCC in their first ACA T20 Division 2 game at Ballpark Graz on 06.05.2023. The game started a half hour late as SEPCC’s previous game with GTCC ended with an exciting Super Over.
With SCCG’s captain Vikram being injured, stand-in captain Karthik lost the toss and the SCCG were put to Bat first. Jimmy and ACA debutant Chandan opened the innings with grace, scoring boundaries atleast once every two balls and rotating the strike. Once chandan got out with a catch at the deep 3rd man, an in-form Amit joined Jimmy at the crease. However, luck was not on Amit’s side as he was dismissed with a sharp catch by the keeper in the very next ball. The captain Karthik came in at no. 4, and along with Jimmy, put up a 40 odd run partnership maintaining a run rate of 9. Jimmy went on to score after karthik got dismissed with a catch at long off right at the boundary, until he was also caught out at the midwicket boundary at 88 (52) balls, 12 runs short of a well deserved century. Sahil had also scored consistently by rotating strike with Jimmy. Once Jimmy was out, Sahil accelerated his innings, and with some very quick running between the wickets in the final two overs, pulled SCCG’s total to 183/5 in the allotted 20 overs.
In what seemed an off-day, SCCG strike bowler shirzad bowled a mediocre first over unlike his usual self. Harun continued his in form bowling, unfortunate as a catch was dropped in the slips and his last delivery of the second over clubbed to Six at square leg. The SEPCC openers were scoring runs consistently of every second ball. However, Ghani stepped up to the task and bowled beautifully along with Sahil to restrict the runs severly and also pick up a wicket each in their first over. The second over from Ghani (over #7) was so beautifully bowled that after a single run off the first ball, there were three dots and two consecutive wickets as Ghani bowled both a set batsman and the new one on the crease in two deliveries. Sahil also bagged the in form set in SEPCC opener, trapping him in front of the wickets in the very next over. Jimmy joined the attack at the 8th over, spinning his way to two beautiful overs with one wicket. The SEPCC batsmen at the crease at that moment, after the 10th over had a burst of boundaries in the next five overs pulling the score to 130 in the 15th over. However, the 16th over bowled by Ghani was again so beautiful that resulted only in 1 run and a wicket of the SEPCC batsman harman singh, the one who scored the boundaries. By then there was a light issue as rainclouds had darkened, and the umpires suggested to the SCCG captain to consider this. Thus, instead of Harun and shirzad bowling the last three overs, the captain Karthik bowled the 17th over. He struck at the first ball with a flighted delivery, and amit taking an amazing catch running all the way from long off towards mid off, diving to the front in an amazing effort. The next ball was a single, and the third ball was another wicket edged off a turning ball to ghani at point. The 10th batsman was not in a condition to bat, so the SEPCC were declared all out by the umpire Pawan Kohli, with a total of 132 runs.
The SCCG had won by a margin of 51 runs by bowling SEPCC out in 17.3 overs. Though it was SEPCC’s second game of the day the players showed tremendous energy on the field and great sportsmanship. The SCCG will play SLCC in Latschach am Worthersee on 20.05.2023 in their next game of the ACA T20 League.
Furthermore, the SCCG promote its #PLAYGREEN activities again by informing the SEPCC about our videos on sustainable cricket and spread awareness.
More information on #PLAYGREEN can be found at https://sccgcricket.com/sccg-go-green-this-year/
#PLAYGREEN , play sustainably to save our tomorrow!
SCCG®: Play Green, Play for our Future 