Mihir Trading enter final in style with a crushing 69 run win over Asiatic Engg
Venue: Plot 3, Western Railway
In these days of slam-bang cricket, any team would back themselves to chase less than run a ball. Asiatic Engineering was no different. But it will take them some time to overcome the fact that they lost by more than half the margin. A margin of victory of 69 runs when the team batting first scores just above 100 mark talks a lot about the batting failure. Bowlers can’t be blamed for restricting the opposition for such a low score.
In the semi-final of Milan T20 tournament, Mihir trading won the toss and chose to bat first. The openers could not do much as Shrey Sobalia was run out after scoring 4 runs. The second wicket partnership of 43 runs between Darshan Ruparel (28 runs) and Jay Atha (22 runs) turned out to be the highest partnership of the match. No other batsman could really shift gears as Mihir Trading struggled to score even run a ball. They eventually ended their innings at 109 runs for the loss of 9 wickets. While it was the number of run outs that cost Mihir Trading the most, bowlers Mohsin and Imran shared a couple of wickets each to further dent the innings. 
Asiatic Engineering were the happier dugout at the time of innings break and rightly so. A place in the finals was just 110 runs away. But we should not forget this is cricket. Anything can happen here. And it did. Mihir bowlers literally rattled the Asiatic batsmen and shot them out for mere 41 runs, even lesser than the highest partnership in Mihir’s innings. Only Imran Patel and Mohsin Qureshi could enter double digits. Unlike Mihir’s innings that was ruled by as many as 5 run outs, Asiatic batsmen lost all their wickets to bowlers. In what was a complete team effort, 2 bowlers i.e. Vishal Gajra and Vishal Ruparel bagged 3 wickets each while Ankit Shah and Mukesh Thakar captured a couple each.
Vishal Gajra received the man of the match award for his all-round effort – 14 runs, 3/12.
Brief Scores:
Mihir Trading: 109/9 in 20 overs (Darshan 28, Jay 22, Imran 2/18)
Asiatic Engg: 41 all out in 10.1 overs (Imran 12, Gajra 3/12, Ruparel 3/04)
Report By:
Sumanyu Jain
Regional Manager & Editor
www.cricketgraph.com