July 27, 2010

A great start for the tour. We won our first match convincingly against the NCC, one of Sri Lanka’s premier cricket clubs. KKR chased down their total of 155 in just 22  overs, thanks to an outstanding century from Haryana captain Sunny Singh. Sunny’s 106 was scored off 98 balls with the help of 2 sixes and 13 fours. He was well supported by Chetan Sharma, who contributed 22 in a first wicket stand of 77, and Mandeep Singh who was unbeaten on 28.

Earlier, a wicket each in the first two over’s stymied NCC’s start, and a third with the score at 20 did their cause no good. Parvinder Awana did the early damage, and finished with excellent figures of 21 runs and 3 wickets in his 8 overs.  After the early debacle, Jehan Mubarak and Pussesola tried to rebuild but were tied down by some good restrictive spin bowling from the captain , Sourashish Lahiri, and Arlen Konwar. Finally Jehan departed for 22, trying to force Konwar, and Gaurav Jathar took two late wickets to have NCC on the mat. Only some late hitting by Sri Lanka international Ganegama, who got 3 fours in his 35, gave the score some respectability.

Early days yet, but good to beat a team that boasted 5 -6 Sri Lankan Under-23 players and two Sri Lankan internationals, Mubarak and Ganegame.

The boys went back to the hotel in a good mood, and immediately entered the pool for a recovery session. There was a bit of  drama as marketing and logistics manager Mathew Joy suddenly went down in the deep end, and was thankfully rescued by Awana and Akhlakh. Certainly will not hurt their cause for a team berth next year.

Tomorrow, we practice at Bloomfield, another lovely cricket facility, in the morning and hope to get the boys out later to the test match to see a bit of the action.