AWARDS

Best Batsman : Ajay Sah. He batted like a dream, and in the process, made himself an icon player.

Best Bowler : Sachin Baid. He took wickets, bowled a consistent line and length, and gave away precious little. Any batsman who underestimated him, paid the price.

Best Fielder : Mudit Shah. He is serious, even when he is playing. He gave 'everything' a whole new meaning. Impossible fielding feats were achieved and his fielding ensured that his team had to chase a lot lower than they perhaps deserved to.

Best Team Spirit : Team Delhi (Purple Haze). They were written off at the very beginning. However, in the very first match of the tournament, they proved otherwise, they beat The Underdogs, and after that everyone took them seriously. Though they lost the other matches, the margin of defeat in every case was very little. Here is hoping that they play up to their full potential in the next series.

First 50 : Vijay Purohit. Save the best for the best occasion. Vijay Purohit played a captains innings against the UnderDogs' traditional rivals, The Blockbusters. The fifty not only won the UnderDogs the match, but also helped them from being eliminated from the series. Also note, this was the only 50 scored in the tournament.

Entertaining Player of the Tournament : Mahendra. Period.

Flop Player(s) of the Tournament : Yet to be Decided.


Suggestions and comments are welcome and will be added to the list.

16 Radians clinch The Challenger Series

In a breathtaking display of their skill and talent the 16 Radians ensured that all their detractors keep their mouths firmly shut as they went on to win the Challenger Series in a nail biting match against GJ 6.

But, more on that later, first the semi finals...

The First match of the day was between GJ 6 and The Blockbusters.
GJ 6 started off as the firm favourites, and they put up a respectable score for the Blocbusters to chase.

The Blocbusters started on a positive note courtesy Shreyans. From the first few overs, it appeared that GJ 6 would be losing once again to the Blockbusters (they had earlier lost in the league stage) but, a few quick wickets, and things appeared more than a little shaky for the Blockbusters. After, Shreyans, Mahendra, Suvojit and Deva departed, things were always going to be difficult.

Sarthak Guru gave them a glimmer of hope by hitting a couple of huge sixers, but soon he and Arjun departed in quick succession, succumbing to the pressure of the few remaining deliveries. And, thus GJ 6 was through to the finals.

The next semi final was between us (UnderDogs) and 16 Radians.

Our first blow came in the form of Kumar Janmejay's absence. His illness caused him to 'NOT ONLY' miss our crucial semi final clash but also his Class Test in the morning.

The fact that we came to know that he wasn't playing only a few minutes before our clash led to us panicking...however, hats off to Dhruv for playing for us in such short notice.

We won the toss, and after having a team talk, we decided to bat, going against our usual practice, the reason of this is because we perceived the 16 Radians as 'uncomfortable chasers' and we were hoping to post a 50+ total, which would have pressurized them.

Our plans however, remained just that, plans. Vijay got out in the first over itself by a wonderful delivery by Abhishek Chaturvedi. Vinit came in with one single thought on the teams mind, 'survive'.

Vinit did that, and more, he was scoring at an average pace, and he remained on crease, which was our sole intention, however sometime during the fifth over or so, runs slowly began to dry up. Vinit was playing brilliantly, and hitting shots with wonderful timing, but somehow the ball just refused to cross the boundary with as much regularity as it should have, sheer poor luck actually. Vinit himself was not comfortable with the situation, and he suggested that someone else do the batting. Which we all agreed to, at that point of time.

That proved to be the undoing, Amit, Anand and Dhruv tried their best, but they were pressurized to make quick runs, and fell in the process.
Vinit came back again, for the last seven balls, and tried his best, but the pressure to score runs coupled with brilliant bowling, restricted us to a measly total of 36 runs.

This was definitely not a total that would trouble the awesome batting lineup of 16 Radians. But, we sure as hell tried hard, our fielding was great (modesty be damned), and we tried our best to pressurize them into making some mistakes. But, Ajay Sah seemed invulnerable, until a loose shot placed outside finally ended his superb innings.

After Ajay, the enormously talented Abhishek Chaturvedi came to bat, but could only score six before Vijay took a superb catch to dismiss him.
Nirav Meena came in next, and kept his cool, despite the verbal volleys coming to him from the UnderDogs members, we were trying our best to distract him, but he was too experienced to take notice of all this. He kept the scoreboard ticking and finally was caught by me, but by then his job had been done. Khanjan came in next, and got the remaining runs in a flash, and we, The UnderDogs were out of the tournament. We tried our best, but we were beaten by a better team.

The final match was destined to be a run fest, with GJ 6 and 16 Radians both in prime form.

GJ 6 decided to bat first, and thanks to Nirav Bhatt and Parth Bhatt, set up a huge total of 62 runs.

Most of us assumed that 16 Radians had no chance, because of their tendency to choke while chasing.

However, an in-form Ajay Sah, who has blossomed from being a 'slam-bam' make do batsman to an enormously thinking, entertaining and reliable one had other plans. His 48 not out was beautiful and could not have come at a more appropriate occasion. Sadly though, in order to take no risks in the final overs, Abhishek Chaturvedi and Rajeev batted in his place so as to take the team home safely, thus denying him (and us) to a half century greatly deserved.

GJ 6 tried everything to defend their total, but could not do so, they tried everything in the books, but 16 Radians were too good, though I personally felt that Nirav Bhatt deserved to bowl both of his overs.

In the end, both the teams played good cricket, with 16 Radians playing 'just' a bit better than their counterparts to win The Challenger Series.


Contributed By : Kanishka Chakrabarti (VC)

16 Radians win the Challenger Series

16 Radians defeated GJ 6 in a nail biter.
Full Review would be made available by 10.30 pm IST (9th August, 2008).

Exciting Semi Finals and Finals on the cards

First and foremost, the original composition of "The UnderDogs", is back. We have always stressed that the chemistry of the team is very important, and right now, we are back with the original six players.

We had five teams at the start of the Challenger Series, and one team had to be eliminated, so unfortunately, Team Delhi (Purple Haze) had to depart. They had played some outstanding cricket and looked all set to reach the semi-finals, but the Blockbusters defeated them in a thrilling encounter.

Tomorrow, the semi-finals and finals are scheduled to take place, while The UnderDogs face 16 Radians, Blockbusters will face GJ 6 in the Semi Final stages.

The current favourites of the tournament appear to be GJ 6, apart from their defeat against the Blockbusters, they have been playing good, competitive cricket, and it will be exciting to see whether the Blockbusters can defeat GJ 6 again.

On the other side, we will be facing 16 Radians, though we defeated them today, it was not their usual line up which we faced, but come tomorrow, we have the mean task of defeating a full strength 16 Radians, which, by any standards, will not be easy.

Co-incidentally, GJ 6 is the only team that we, The UnderDogs, have never defeated, and if they beat the Blockbusters, and should we defeat the 16 Radians, we will be looking to change that piece of statistic.

Its amazing to have Vinit and Janmejay back, they being a part of the team is very important to us and our overall performance, as we have stressed from time to time.

With us 6 on the field, something clicks, and we give that extra effort that perhaps normally we would not have. The only other similar feeling is probably when we play the Blockbusters, our traditional rivals. When these two fiercely competitive teams compete, you can literally feel the tension and excitement in the atmosphere.

We love to play them, and (I guess) vice versa, so we hope that the two teams get to clash in the finals. That would be the ingredient of one sure-shot great match.

Best of luck to all the teams and may the better team win...

Contributed By : Kanishka Chakrabarti (VC)

The Challenger Series

The Challenger Series unveiled today and with a great upset win by Purple Haze (Team Delhi) over the UnderDogz. On a sluggish and wet pitch, Purple Haze managed a score of 36 and defended it well, though Kalpit's innings almost saw us home, but it was not to be. Ashwath, i think bowled brilliantly and his leg spin is quite deadly. He just needs to control his line a bit. Dhruv and Ashwath both batted well. I got out on a peach of a delivery which spun just a bit with some flight and i could just drive it out. Our batting wasn't well shaped due to the absence of Vinit and Janmejay. Nevertheless, we played poor cricket. Our next match was against the Block Busters, who will miss the talented Sagarnil in this series. We chose to bat this time and thankfully my bat did something this time. This was my first half century in this format, and by par the best innings i have played on the venue. We were 57 in 7 overs and then Anand and Co. help the team put a tall-score of 82 runs. Many would have considered it a one sided match, but Suvojit Halder had other intentions. His knock of 42 kept them in the run, but after he fell they could manage 58. The next match between the Block Busters and 16 Radians was won by the Radians and the following match between Purple Haze and the Radians, also by the Radians. In this match though the Radians posted a total of 84, Anup bowled brilliantly for his 3 wickets. The following match between GJ-6 and us, was won by GJ-6 again, as we posted a low total of 34 which was surpassed by them. Manish Kanth playing for our team bowled a great spell and got rid of the dangerous Parth. But Sahil batted well to see them home.

The series is in an interesting phase and we shall see who advance to the last four.

Keep visiting the blog.

Vijay Purohit
The UnderDogz (C)