Captain Raj's Report for T20 vs TLCC and WTCC, March 8th 2015.

Post date: Mar 11, 2015 5:51:7 PM

Hello FUCCers,

We had a wonderful last weekend both on weather and performance wise. FUCC has won both the matches. One with conviction and next one with a gutsy performance, showing a never to die attitude. What a win that was.

We had two back to back matches and i know sometimes its difficult to spare some time out of our busy schedule, but whoever was available did pretty well.

FUCC Vs WTCC

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First match was against WTCC. I wanted to win the toss and bat first and wanted our batters to spend some quality time on the wicket since we did not have a match practice for long. Good i won the toss and batted first and we did have a very decent outing in the middle. I still believe we could have done better but in the absence of some key player we were pretty good. I played my natural innings and with the help of some decent contributions form Sunny, Imran, Suniel and Suresh, we were able to put  a very competitive total on board. 

I would like to highlight the performance of Suresh here. He really batted well and with conviction. He took the ownership of rotating strike with me and helped me in setting up the game in the last couple of overs. This is what i want from our middle order. Suniel was doing well before suresh but one wrong shot and he threw his wicket. I know he felt bad for that shot and i hope he has learned a lesson. Sometime we need to play against our natural instinct. I know Suniel will come back better in next coming matches.

Again, in bowling department Sukesh was brilliant as usual. How many times FUCC has witnessed his contribution in first 7-8 overs with the new ball. He is very deceptive. Natural in swinger of the ball and let me tell you very quick learner of his mistakes. He gave us a wonderful start and other bowlers utilized this brilliant start and knocked out the opponent cheaply. Sitta, Vinod, Harish, Jignesh bowled well. Vinod has got some serious pace and very good line length and he showed in the middle that he is a very good bowler and fielder.

At the end FUCC won by 58 runs. It is a good margin to win with. We tried all our bowling options, which is good match practice for all. Job well done.

FUCC Vs TLCC

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Next we played with TLCC. We all knew they were strong team and have the tendency to surprise any team on their given day with their performance. And we were almost surprised.

I, again wanted to win the toss and bat first but TLCC won the toss and asked us to bowl. I believe which is another good thing happend to us. First match we batted and tested our batting, now we were bowling and had a chance to test the bowling first option.

As usual , Sukesh again gave us a brilliant start by picking up 3 early wickets. Navnanith joined the party and bowled with serious pace and managed to control the scoring rate from other end. One thing which i would like to mention is bowling in partnerships is as important as batting in partnerships. This is exactly we achieved by having Sukesh and Navanith bowling in tandem which is a very good sign. 

TLCC was down to some 5 wickets for 50 runs. Now this is where we had to show the the authority and could have gone for kill. We almost did but we dropped couple of sitters and TLCC gained the momentum back and punished us for our mistakes. Folks, this is where we need to step up. When opposition is down and out, we need to go for kill. We need to raise the bar of fielding and catching especially and finish the game. This can only be learned if we are ready to learn and practice it and apply it on the match.

Rahul was brought and proved to be a good decision. Rahul is a find for us and turning out be a juggernaut with his leg spin. He is showing tremendous control over the leg spin which is really a great advantage for Captain. Having a very good leg spinner in the team is a deadly weapon to have and i am lucky to have him as a Leg spinner and we all know he is hell good of a batsman. 

We restricted TLCC to 132, which is still a very good bowling performance.

We got a good start in our batting. I and Teji scored quickly. Then we lost three quick wickets. Here comes the veteran we all love. A gem of player and person. Sunny K. With help of Sunny E, they both steered the ship. We were about 60/3 something in 12. We needed a very big partnership and both Sunny K and Sunny E guided the team. Sunny K was especially ruthless, he scored about 26 in one over and gave us the much needed momentum. Sunny E fell down at wrong time, result of again a wrong selection of the shot, which i am pretty sure he knows and already have started working out. Then we had a unwanted stoppage in between and which as usual resulted the wicket of Sunny K. Our lower order batsman did not have much of the match practice and they also fell down to the pressure of scoring rate. But there was Navanith, who was pretty confident of steering the ship for FUCC. 

If you see the Navanith scoring runs (. 1211121212611). This is what he did. brilliant. This guy batted against his usual style and won the game for US. And who can forget the contribution of Dennis. He was the last wicket and he really did well bringing Navanith on strike. Navanith delivered the striking punch in the last over and won the game for us. 

This was a brilliant game. A lesson learned. Good this happened to us. It taught us that we should never take anything for granted. We chased and won the game. Which i think is going to prove very fruitful for us in coming such match scenarios. Just remeber to use your brains whenever such scenarios happen. It just to decide who will be the best person to be on strike at the given point of time. Thats it. We all are good but sometime one is better at given situation. 

I hope other middle order batsmen learn from Navanith's game. Again sometime we have to play opposite to our natural instincts. I know we have the capability and all will work on this.

Lets meet on Thursday 3/12 for our first practice session and work on our weaknesses.

By Rajan Thakur