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Cricket Dogs roll over Tide, again |
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Wednesday, 07 March 2007 |
For the Daily News
The Mississippi State Cricket Dawgs have started 2007 with a victory over their rivals at Alabama, defeating the Crimson Cricket Club. The MSU Cricket Club maintained their perfect home and away record against the Crimson tide. Once again, the UAT team was beaten by a huge margin. The MSUCC team really needs better teams to test itself. The Crimson tide has rolled over so many times for us that it is pretty much spinning.
This year is going to be another busy one for the MSU Cricket Club with a number of on and off campus events scheduled. The team was looking to get back into a groove with this season opener. The players had put in a number of practice sessions on the Drill Field and were confident of a strong showing but the way in which the UAT attack was demolished was astonishing. MSU won the toss and elected to bat. Nanda and Phani were opening together for the first time and started off cautiously but did not lose any opportunity to score runs.
Once they got used to the surface they opened up their arms and used the short boundaries to good effect. The left and right combination did not help and any error in line and length was duly punished by the batsmen. Also, the shoddy ground fielding by UAT fielders did not help and MSU was off to an explosive start. It seemed that the only way UAT could get either of them was by running them out and that is what happened. Nanda came back for a sharp second run but was beaten by the fielders throw to be run out on 26. This brought Alok, the captain, to the crease after an opening stand of almost 50, which is a special achievement in itself. By now the MSU batsmen were supremely confident and both Alok and Phani started thrashing the bowlers all around the park. They were also very good in stealing singles to balls tapped to the close in field. Alok was done in by a clever piece of bowling after a quick fire 29. Prabhu went in at the fall of the wicket and kept the pressure on the bowlers. Phani had been there since the beginning but both of them ran hard to convert 2’s into 3’s.
Phani finally perished going for another quick run in the penultimate over. His mammoth effort earned him 39 runs and a special cash award from MSU Cricket Club. Prabhu ended up with 21 runs at the end of the MSU innings giving a total of 148 runs to the bowlers to defend. Each one of the MSU batsmen got some runs to their name that bodes well for the upcoming games.
MSU bowlers are a reputed to be lethal and they set about proving just that.
Kotesh, the vice captain, opened the bowling with Sudhir. The bowling was tight and the pressure resulted in a run out from a sharp throw by Nischal. Nischal’s out fielding was a revelation. Both bowling and ground fielding was right on the mark and all the UAT batsmen were made to work very hard for the runs. Only a single boundary was scored off the bat for the UAT team. Kotesh almost got a hat trick that is getting 3 batsmen out from consecutive balls. The first change was Bharat who was debuting in this game. After a nervous start, he settled down into a good line and length and also got his first wicket for MSU.
The Crimson tide batsmen?s nightmare was not over yet as Prabhu and Alok came in to bowl. Prabhu was another bowler who almost got an hat trick. He returned with the best bowling figures of 3 for 12 in 4 overs. The MSU bowlers knocked off the UAT batsmen for only 82 runs to defeat the Crimson Cricket Club by 65 runs. This was another dominating performance by the MSU cricket team with excellent showing by the batsmen followed up with a good effort by the bowlers.
The MSU bowlers leaked a few extras, which is something that needs to be addressed for the coming matches. All the debutants in this game: Nishcal, Ananda, Karthik and Bharat performed creditably and hold a lot of promise for the years to come.
Match Summary: MSU 148/3 in 16 overs, UAT 82 all out in 15.4 overs.
Man of the match: Phani Karnati
The team will be traveling soon to UA, Birmingham in a few weeks and hosting an Alumni tournament later this month on the Drill Field. The players who represented MSU in the game included Nanda Kishore, Prabhuram Jagadeeshan, Alok
Singh (Captain), Phani Karnati, Sudhir Koduri, Kotesh Padamati (Vice Captain),
Bharath K. Ravulapati, Nischal Vadari, Karthik Vangala, Surya Saha and Ananda Sekar. The 12th man was Arun Velagapalli. MSU Cricket Club is a part of Department of Recreational Sports at MSU. It was established in October 2002 and has come a long way since winning games and tournaments in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee among others. It is one of the foremost university cricket clubs in the country. Please contact Surya Saha at
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for further information about the cricket club. Please
visit www.msstate.edu/org/mcc for latest updates on the Cricket Club?s news and
events. |
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 08 March 2007 )
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