Mahesh Hirpara and Shaheen Mistry shine in he ongoing AT20 Championship 18

AESA-Pune, a team showing signs as one of the contenders for the ‘AT20 – season VII’ championship, played their second league match against Edifice Cricket Club at Oval in the afternoon session yesterday, 29th December 2018. AESA-Pune acting captain, Mangesh Hande won the toss and elected to field first on a track looking great for batting. ECC started off in style with their ever aggressive batsman Mahesh Hirpara and Shaheen Mistry, one of the most dominant players of the tournament, scoring runs at will and at a run rate of over 10, in the first ten overs. AESA bowlers were wayward barring Mangesh. Seamers and the lone left arm spinner in Abhishek Shah, could not contain Mahesh and Shaheen who went on hitting boundaries and the bowlers bowled to the batter’s strengths. It was finally in the 15th over, Abhishek bowled with some loop and got rewarded with both the openers’ wickets. The score after 15 overs read 151/2, still in a very good position for a big score. But, Vikrant from the other end got a wicket in the 16th and Abhishek struck again in the 17th. That put ECC on the back foot with no big hitter left to take advantage of the last overs & the main strike bowler Mangesh had finished his quota when he bowled his fourth in the 13th over itself and ECC were finally restricted to 177/5.

With the good batting track, AESA were to take that score and they started off well with Chaitanya Padhye, asked to open the innings, hit a big one and two fours in the first over itself, taking the score to 16/0. Venkatesh Wagh on the other side was looking good too, scoring at run a ball, saw AESA-Pune scoring at a pace matching ECC. It was a loose shot from Chaitanya, playing away from his body and a good catch at mid-off, got ECC their first break through. AESA continued to lose wickets but the track helping the batters, no more swing and no turn for spinners, was proving to be good enough. Mangesh Hands and Neeraj were cruising along nicely till the 15th over when another loose shot got Neeraj out, trying to use his power against a ball not quite hittable. AESA still got to 154 in 16 overs with 5 wickets in hand and 24 to get from 24 balls when Mangesh tried to flick a straight delivery in the blockhole by Shaheen and got himself bowled. It could have still been managed to score 15 off 18 or 10 off 12 but the lower order batsmen could just not take the pressure and saw their team falling short by 5 runs of winning.
AESA-Pune lost 3 wickets through run-outs, 3 caught on loose shots, 2 being bowled and 2 being leg before, have many a things to work on, I am sure they will do it & fast.

It’s generally said that the better team won, but yesterday it was Mahesh and Shaheen who won and the better team ended up losing the match.

Author: Hemant Sathye