As the ICUSA Winter Cricket League Tournament preliminary rounds matches approach its final stage, “Galaxy” clinically demolished its opponents last Saturday to record 3 more wins. They defeated “Stars”, “Stripes” and “Sparky Lady” to qualify for a semi-finals spot and gather the winning momentum at the appropriate time in preparation for the Super 4 stage of the competition.
Galaxy CC (Left to Right) – Manoj, Ryan, Udesh, Conrad, Krishna and Rana Prataap.
Galaxy vs. Stars
“Stars” batted first and were only able to put together a meager 52 runs. The “Galaxy” bowlers were on top of their game with Manoj Balgobin getting 2 wickets for 0 runs in his allotted overs, while Udesh took 2 wickets for minus 4 runs. The “Stars” opening batsmen- Roshan Patel and Anush Tharnari lost 15 runs via the dismissals route in their parternership, and the team never recovered from that poor start.
“Galaxy”, in reply, had no problems in scoring 100 runs with ease. For the youngsters Omar Latif had an excellent bowling spell of 2 overs, 2 wickets for 4 runs with some disciplined bowling. The other bowlers could not have emulated his example in stemming the flow of runs and so “Galaxy” was victorious.
Krishna Harrichand of Galaxy with a blistering square cut against Sparky Lady.
Galaxy vs. Stripes
“Galaxy” defeated “Stripes”, whose performance seemed to be fading away at this critical time in the Tournament. “Stripes” batted first and was dismissed for an inadequate 66. They were faced with excellent bowling from the “Galaxy” bowlers. Manoj Balgobin bowling spell produced a miserly 3 runs for 1 wicket and Sunil “Kalli” was even better with 2 wickets for 0 runs.
Replying, “Galaxy” made 112 without any pressure. The batters applied themselves and scored their runs leisurely as they as they cruised to victory. “Stripes” bowling was reasonable but their efforts were constrained by the paucity of their batting performance, which failed to put up a competitive score.
Galaxy vs. Sparky Lady
In the last match of the evening “Galaxy” changed their pattern of the earlier games by batting first and scoring 127 at the rate of 10.7 runs per over and leaving “Sparky Lady” with a challenging chase. The opening pair of Balgobin and Udesh put on a solid 38 runs which the second pair of batsmen Kawal Persaud and Sunil Kallicharran built upon with a 53 runs partnership which was aided by poor bowling which conceded 20 runs in byes and no-balls. Mustahsan Mirza was the only economical bowler by bowling 6 dot balls in his 12 deliveries spell.
“Sparky Lady” was dismissed for 69 runs as the ever improving “Galaxy” bowlers continued their good evening’s work with good line and length bowling which made runs scoring difficult.
The Semi-finalists for the Tournament have now been identified. They are “Royals”, “Galaxy” “Stripes” and “Sparky Lady”. Two of these teams will move on to the Tournament’s Finals which will be followed immediately after, with the Tournament’s presentation ceremony in keeping with the timing standards of international cricket Tournament presentation ceremonies.
