A great weekend for the Cannons with 3 big wins over East Coast CC (40 Over, Div 3 and Div 4) and just the one loss (Div 3 against NS Avengers CC on Friday). Sunday's Div 3 win was our 100th as a club. Our Div 2 team lost the opportunity to continue the winning streak over ECCC as rain hit just as the game was about to start.
After a slow start to the year, our batsmen really picked it up this weekend, with our 40 over team setting a new club record of 278, in which skipper Zeeshan Ansari's 97 was enough on its own to beat East Coast's paltry 87. In Div 3, we also set our highest ever score in that division amassing 187, while our Div 4 team exceeded 100 for the first time as it successfully chased 101 to capture our first Div 4 win!
On Friday, we stumbled to 5/95 batting first in our 40 over game, but Zee and Priyank Trivedi (40) both set career best scores in a 122 run partnership to rescue the innings. Our lower order kept up the scoring and took us to 278 all out off 38.5 overs. Our bowlers didn't give them a sniff, with 5 wickets in the first 6 overs preceding the game descending into a farce, firstly with them threatening to call the game due to not being happy over an umpiring call, and then their last wicket pair pointlessly blocking out 7 overs for 6 runs until Zee finally claimed the last wicket, all out 87 off only 23.3 overs for a massive 191 run win. Shadab Ahmed led the way with 3 early wickets, while spinners Sagar Mandhan and Hiren Patel took 2 each. Scorecard
Our Div 3 team would then bat first in their game against Avengers. An improved batting display allowed us to reach 6/141 off 20, with Hassan Hafeez top scoring with an unbeaten 44 after Grant Whitcombe got us off to a a quick start with 22. The target would prove to be insufficient as Avengers batted well and took advantage of some below par fielding from us. They would pass our score with 5 wickets and 15 balls to spare, but not before Ragu Ravichandran and skipper Kazi Rahman took a couple of wickets each. Scorecard
Sunday saw us with 3 games scheduled against ECCC, but with a lot of rain in the forecast. Fortunately it held off long enough for the first 2 games to be completed, Div 2 missing out at the end of the day. Div 4 would field first and great opening spells from Tommy Upton (2/14 off 4) and Arun Kuriakose (3/9 off 4) reduced them to 3/3 in the 2nd over. The rest of the bowlers continued applying the pressure, with Ravi Kiran Revu taking out the lower middle order with 4/10 off his 4 overs. We bowled them out for 101 on the last ball of the 20th. In our chase, Saurabh Tiwari took it upon himself to ensure the win, batting the whole innings to finish unbeaten on 33 as we passed them 6 down with 2 overs to spare. After a couple of close losses, this was a well deserved maiden win for our Div 4 team! Scorecard
Div 3 were up next, also searching for their first win of 2024. Batting first, we scored at a quick rate from the get go. New recruit Saurabh Shreekumar appreciated his chance to bat up the order with 42 from first drop. Mehak Babbar contributed a quickfire 37 from 25 balls, before Muneeb Ahmedani made a spectacular start to his Cannons career with an unbeaten 61 from only 29 balls to take us to 5/187 off our 20. Fahim Choudhary took 2 wickets in the first over of their chase. It would be a wait for the next breakthrough, but the bowling was tight enough to ensure a win was always in the bag, Raj Suhagiya took our other two wickets later in the innings, ECCC ending at 4/154 off 20, a 33 run win for us. Scorecard
