TCC TAPED BALL TOURNAMENT SPRING 2014 – SPARTANS WINNERS, HJCC RUNNERS UP
Spartans won the TCC Taped Ball Spring 2014 tournament defeating Houston Javelinas Cricket Club (HJCC) by 57 runs and maintained their perfect record of winning the final in all of their appearances. It was a highly competitive tournament involving 15 teams.
Spartans opted to bat first after winning the toss on a cloudy morning. Both Spartans openers Manne and Jeeva started off pretty positively. Manne played few beautiful shots to get quick fire of 19 runs from 3 overs. When all looked really good for Spartans they quickly lost 3 inform batsmen (Manne, Jeeva and Srini) within 5 overs with the score reading 19/3, that put Spartans on the back foot. New batsmen Saishyam and Aradhya got together afterwards to start rebuilding the innings. They never panicked even when the runs were not coming. In the rebuilding effort they played out few overs to keep the wickets for later assault. They batted beautifully and started hitting shots from 9th over onwards. The score was reading 49/3 at the end of 10 overs. Platform was well laid by these 2 batsmen. Right after the 10 over drinks break both set batsmen started to attack HJCC bowlers. It was a treat to watch both their innings. Sai played an innings filled with classic offside drives into the gaps and calculated risks when needed to up the ante. On the other hand Aradhya started slow but once he got his eye in, he was in the zone and played few beautiful shots including 2 sixes (first one over Square leg and another over long on boundary). Score was moving at 10 rpo after the drinks break. But once again Spartans lost both set batsmen Aradhya and Sai’s wickets quickly, it was left to rest of the batsmen to provide that last overs push, Kiran Muppala gave that power play impetuous needed for the innings with a quick fire of 26 runs. The innings was finished by Suthan, Krishna and Venky with useful contributions to setup a good score of 141/9 wkts in 20 overs.
HJCC needing 142 to win from 20 overs to win the championship started slowly against some quality bowling by Spartans opening bowlers. Both seasoned openers Yesu and Gautam could not score more than 2 runs from first 2 overs. When the pressure started mounting on batsmen Yesu went for an extra cover drive and got caught by a beautiful catch by Manne at deep extra cover in the third over of the chase. Both Nattu and Kiran bowled beautifully to restrict the HJCC for 12/1 runs from mandatory power play overs. Yesu’s wicket with not many runs on board set HJCC on the back foot. Spartans brought Srini into attack in 5th over, he bowled beautifully. He struck 3 important blows (all caught behind by Krishna) to reduce HJCC middle order with not many runs on board. Pressure started to mount on rest of the HJCC batsmen. Saishyam and Sohail also bowled beautifully and contained HJCC batsmen from scoring any runs. Only Gautam, Pavan Reddy and Praveen from Javelinas showed some resistance against quality Spartans attack. Wickets kept falling at regular intervals and HJCC innings was ended at 84 runs as Nattu and Suthan cleaned up the tail enders in 2-3 overs. In the end Spartans won the game by 57 runs.
Spartans captain Nattu Rao was declared MOM for his bowling figures of 4 wickets for 10 runs from 3.1 overs. Nattu Rao was also the Best bowler of the tournament for picking up 22 wickets from 10 games.
The complete score card and further match details is available at: http://www.sportstatz.com/ss/web.asp?club=779&mode=100&match=19996.
The game was followed by a well-organized prize distribution ceremony arranged by TCC and attended by number of friends and family members who had come to support the teams. The presentation party had Surya Saladi, founder member and member of Board of Directors of TCC as Chief Guest, President Nanda Kumar, Vice President Krishna Shikaram, Secretary Nataraja Rao, member of Board of Directors Venky Rao and TCC cricket team member Kiran. Jagadish Biradar, organizer of TCC Taped Ball tournament coordinated the presentation ceremony. Surya Saladi was presented with a plaque by Nanda Kumar for his contribution to cricket in Houston.
Nataraja Rao, the captain of Spartans was presented with the championship trophy and Satish, the captain of HJCC was presented with the runners up trophy. The players of the winners and runners up received individual trophies. Man of the match for the finals was Nataraja Rao from Spartans for a match winning bowling performance with figures of 3.1-1-10-4.
Anil Sunke from HJCC won the Best Batsman trophy with 233 runs. Nataraja Rao from Spartans won the Best Bowler trophy with a record 22 wickets and Sujith Pasupuleti won the best All-Rounder trophy with 165 runs and 12 wickets.
Trophies were also given to the man of the match for Semi Finals and Quarter Finals. Suresh from HJCC and Sreeni from Spartans were the recipients of the man of the match for Semi Finals. Sujith from HJCC, Gihan from SLCC, Nataraja Rao from Spartans and Prashant from Thunderbolts were the recipients of the man of the match for Quarter Finals.