By Sham Ali
(Celebrating 46th Anniversary):- On so many occasions, a cricket match delivered a mind-blowing contrast between two teams batting and bowling in a match that one is left in awe as to what really happened. That was clearly the case last Sunday when Cosmos and imperial came up against each other at Flushing Park on pitch #5.
It could not have been more revealing that Imperial came out to play hard while Cosmos was simply going through the motions. Imperial won the toss and elected to bat on a damp wicket that was more than friendly to bowling, however, the Cosmos bowling attack was extremely poor as they served up a basket full of rank long-hops and some juicy full-tosses upon which the opposition feasted coupled with some excellent running between the wickets. Added that with some serious blunders that was a result of some lackadaisical approach leaves a lot to be desired.
There were too many missed opportunities, and that made it difficult for captain Devindra Balgobin to keep a grip on the match as J. Akif and W. Mazar stitched together a half century partnership with Akif getting a solid 70, however, his unwarranted remarks against an umpire tainted a good inning. With the score of 148 for 5, Cosmos spilled a few crucial regulation chances and paid the price as the total ticked over to 209 all out. The young Alvin Gobin was most impressive with his medium pace talking 2 for 20 off 4 overs.
Cosmos in their reply was brief, very brief. They were blown away in just 10.5 overs. Their scorecard that looked like a bingo card, against an opposition that was more, much more adept at exploiting the conditions of the pitch that got increasingly more difficult to bat on. The off-spinner, S. Tanim, 6 for 6, wrecked havoc on this pitch as he got the ball to turn sharply and kept low while the medium pacer, S. Rasal produced a few shooters for his 4 for 17. Cosmos must be extremely disappointed with how poorly they bowled on this wicket when they saw how difficult it was to bat on wicket that was still soft and became very uneven after running on it in the first inning. It was a good toss to win. At 20 for 9, Cosmos found themselves in dire straits; Akash Rahim, Balgobin and Ryan Ganesh were all undone by shooters that pitched and never got above an inch, however, a huge partnership of seven runs, yea right, between Alvin Gobin and Gohan Gourdeen was the highlight on this bingo card inning that reads Y0, A0, A1, G7, A3, B0, D1, A5, R0, T0, G4, and Bingoooo T27. There isn’t much to crow about this match as Cosmos would need to tuck this one away in a tightly sealed bottle and send it to sea, regroup and bounce back, however, on this day, they were totally outplayed by an opposition that play some excellent cricket.
Cosmos will play Alliance next Sunday at Beach 32.
