CIPLA win Milan Mega Corporate League 2015; Defeat RMPL by 3 runs in final
Venue: Youth Own Union Plot 7 (Cross Maidan)
Due to some fine bowling performance lead by Shrinivas and excellent tactics by skipper Sudip Jadhav, CIPLA defended a score of 125 to emerge as the winners of Milan Mega Corporate League 2015 by defeating RMPL by 3 runs. It also created an absolute cracker of a match which could easily have been a one sided victory for RMPL.
In this all important final, RMPL were lucky with the coin and decided to field first. It can be said that they were spot on in the field as they restricted their opposition to just 125 runs. Throughout the innings, they never let a partnership prosper and were able to contain the CIPLA batsmen. Top 5 batsmen were back in the hut with only 70 runs on the board in the 11th over. They might have been in worse situation had their skipper Sudip not played a quick fire knock of 24 runs from 15 balls. But after he got out, the run rate started to decline. It was only due to no. 9 batsman Rajkumar’s sensible 38* that CIPLA could put up a respectable total on the board.
RMPL had a great day in the field as they affected as many as 4 run outs. Rest of the work was done by the bowlers. Dinesh More was the pick of the bowlers picking up 2 wickets and giving away just 14 runs.
At the halfway stage, it was RMPL’s game as 126 is a cake walk on most days. But this was not one of those days. They were off to a steady start as openers scored 32 runs for the first wicket. Even beyond the opening stand RMPL had the match in their control till the 16th over as they had scored 97 runs for the loss of only 2 wickets. But at this point the match turned on its head.
They lost 2 more wickets at the same score and then they ran out of gas. They lost wickets in a heap with CIPLA bowler Shrinivas being the chief tormentor taking 3 wickets. As many as 4 batsmen ran themselves out and it was the final nail in the coffin. At the start of 20th over they needed 10 runs to win with 5 wickets in hand. But only 6 runs were added to the total at the loss of 4 more wickets and they eventually ended for 122 runs thereby losing by 3 runs.
CIPLA captain Sudip says, “We had almost defended a score of less than 100 against RMPL earlier in the tournament. Though we lost that match, we knew that RMPL will make mistakes if we keep things tight in the field. We were losing the match till the 16th over but some great fielding and stellar bowling performance especially by Shrinivas enabled us to get back into the game and pull it off.”
Shrinivas Bommera was adjudged the man of the match for his turn around bowling performance. Kaushal Modi and Dinesh More from RMPL were adjudged the best batsman and bowler respectively. Rajkumar Shinde walked away with the man of the Series title.
Brief Scores:
CIPLA: 125/9 in 20 overs (Rajkumar 38*, Sudip 24, Dinesh 2/14)
RMPL: 122/9 in 20 overs (Shrinath 41, Prathmesh 25, Shrinivas 3/13)
Match Report by:
Sumanyu Jain
Regional Manager & Editor @CricketGraph