Day 4 - Boom Boom Boom

Day 4 saw some monstrous hitting from all the big names of the tournament. There were 2 big matches being played today - Flame v/s Sholay Reloaded and LBC v/s BoB. 

With a humiliating defeat the previous day, Sholay Reloaded were dying to set things straight. Flame on the other hand, were trying to get some momentum going their way, after their win in the previous game. 

The second match was between LBC and BoB. With both teams winning their first 2 matches, whichever team won today would surely get the psychological edge over the other.  Day 4 was slated to be full on awesomeness!

Flame v/s Sholay Reloaded - Fight fire with fire!

Flame started batting first with Saroj Pradhan and Ashish Jain on the crease. As usual, there was the initial flurry of singles from Flame but this time, they weren't successful. Ashish was run out in the first over itself! and so was Vibhor who came in next. 2 wickets down fairly quickly, Ramashankar - the hero of the last match, was all set to save Flame again. However, the Sholay bowlers did not allow him to stay for long. Ratnesh caught and bowled Ramashankar before he could get his eyes in. Sholay Reloaded were pretty good with their bowling and made sure they got wickets at regular intervals. However, the occasional boundaries and the furious running between the wickets saw Flame reach a competitive total. They ended up with 75 on the board after their 10 overs.

Sholay started off with a bang! Both their openers Vinod and Anand welcomed the Flame bowlers with boundaries and sixes. They were cruising away before their aggression got the better off them. Both the openers were dismissed before they could take the game away from Flame. However, Ratnesh on the crease meant that the danger was not over yet for Flame. But wickets kept falling from the other end. Soon it was upto Ratnesh and Abhinav to save Sholay from getting "extinguished". Thats when Ramashankar cleaned bowled Ratnesh. I swear there was a very audible "gasp" on the ground from each one of  the spectators. That was it for Sholay..with the female batsman batswoman Pramita on the crease...the fate of Sholay was sealed. Or was it??? Abhinav, apparently had other plans. He went berserk! No no...he went "godzilla" on them. Literally! God knows what he had for breakfast, this guy wasn't gonna settle for a loss. He heaved 3 consecutive sixes off Deepak Goel's over. Huge ones..in fact, one of the biggest in the tournament.  If those sixes weren't enough, he hit 2 consecutive boundaries and finished off the game once and for all. It all happened so quickly that everyone really dint believe it...till the Sholay Reloaded team were celebrating. A cracker of a match indeed. One of the best in the tournament till now.

BoB v/s LBC - BoB gets *beeped*

Both the teams had won their first two matches and both wanted to get a psychological edge over the other.   BoB lost the toss and were put into bat by LBC. Himanshu Shivnani and Himanshu Shivhare were the openers. Everyone was expecting a blitzkrieg similar to the one they had showcased last week. However, LBC's tight bowling denied them from cutting loose. The initial overs were in fact rather nervous for the batsmen. BoB never got the start they wanted...rather they never got the start they expected. Himanshu Shivnani  got his stumps rattled by Manish after scoring just 2 runs. Amit Singh who came next also departed early after facing just a single ball. Ashish Trambadia came in next and tried to stabilize the initial onslaught offered by LBC. Both of them were doing well before Ashish got bowled by Girish. Things were looking bleak for BoB, loosing 3 wickets with nothing much on the score board. With 15 odd runs after 5 overs, it looked as if BoB would end up with the lowest score in the tournament. Himanshu Shivhare tried to up the run rate by hitting 2 consecutive sixes of Girish's over but found himself back to the pavilion in the very next over getting bowled by an awesome delivery from Piyush. However, captain Deepak Pant and Nirmal held a good partnership and were at the crease till the end. Nirmal hit some good shots in the end and helped BoB reach a respectable total of 71 runs from their 10 overs. A total where they could fancy their chances against the opposition.

LBC came into bat and were subdued a bit by the BoB bowlers initially. However, the occasional boundary kept the pressure off the LBC batsmen. Amit Anand departed early in the second over itself lobbing a catch to Himanshu Shivhare off Himanshu Shivnani. However, the danger man Piyush came in with no mood for mercy. He got into his groove from the very start of his innings. He cleared the boundary at will and made sure there would be no surprise ending to this tale. Both Piyush and Sachin took the game away from the opposition with some powerful hitting. Piyush hit 3 huge sixes off Nirmal to score 21 runs off his 1 over. That kind of finished up the match for BoB. With 2 runs to win and 3 overs remaining, Sachin finished things off with a boundary. An ecstatic LBC marched off the field winning all 3 of their league matches and stamping their authority of being the strongest team in this tournament.

With the last weekend to go and LBC reserving their finals berth, everyone's still guessing who will be the second team to join them. BoB has a do or die match up against Dabangg. If they win, they would be in the finals for sure. If they lose however, things would get pretty exciting with the NRR coming into play. Next week promises to be an exciting affair indeed.