JMIAA Riyadh Cricket Team Reaches RCL Finals Our Cricket Team has reached the Final of Riyadh Cricket League (RCL) organized T-20 Static Zone Tournament. Its an achievement for the one year old team to create ripples in the Saudi cricketing arena. The match was played at RCL ground 1 under pleasant January afternoon. The stands were packed to the capacity and large number of supporters turned up for cheering their teams. The opponents were Riyadh Blues - a strong contender for the coveted title. JMIAA won the toss and elected to field first as the strategy of chasing has been successful in this tournament. Since it was a bright chance this season to reach a final, JMIAA team was highly pumped up and had made a well planned strategy for nailing the Riyadh Blues opening pair of Shakeel and Sufiyan. The first over of the match was bowled by Mushtaq and as per the plans, we almost had the dangerous Shakeel in the very first over, but he was dropped when the score was only 6. This rang alarm bells in the JMIAA team. However, the team didnt let this drop impact their morale and soon clever bowling by Mushtaq rewarded the team when he hurled a spinning delivery to Shakeel in his next over and tempted him to come forward and play the shot, the ball zipped past kissing his willow and ever energetic wicket keeper Jaber safely deposited the edging ball in his gloves. The entire team went up appealing and the umpire didnt hesitate in ruling Shakeel out. The batsman seemed disagreeing with the umpire but it was a clear nick on the edge of the bat. This early wicket of a dangerous batsman boosted the spirits of the JMIAA team and the entire team huddled together to celebrate the prized wicket. Riyadh Blues couldnt have had a start as bad as this at 20/1 in 2.3 overs and it clearly showed on their next batsmen who couldnt find any answer to disciplined bowling by all the JMIAA bowlers. Sufiyan was the only batsman who could bat sensibly and scored half century. The JMIAA bowling attack supported by excellent fielding was so accurate that only 4 opposition batsmen could reach the double figures. Once Sufiyan departed through a running catch by Nisar on the mid wicket boundary off a flighted delivery from spin webmaster Imran Khan, Riyadh Blues batsmen surrendered tamely. Imran was the pick of the bowlers who took 4 wickets off his quota of 4 overs by giving away only 23 runs while Mushtaq took 2 wickets. It was a superb display of bowling by JMIAA as the Riyadh Blue had not lost more than 5 wickets in the tournament before this match. After their quota of 18 overs, Riyadh Blues could muster 153 for the loss of 10 wickets. In reply, JMIAA opened with the RCLs dreaded duo of dashing Mushtaq and placid Ejaz. Both the openers went to the ground with only one aim - sealing the berth in the final. They played with care and on merit of the ball. Just in order to ascertain the win, Mushtaq played quite unusual to his character and didnt play lofted shots. Mushtaq hit 9 powerful boundaries through precise cuts and drives while Ejaz hit 6 boundaries all over the ground laden with class, timing and elegance. Both the batsmen tackled the spin bowling of towering Shakeel at the front foot and hit him for some boundaries. The duo made it look so simple that none of the Riyadh Blue bowlers had any clue of how to break the opening partnership of JMIAA. When the bowling was made tighter by the opposition bowlers, our shining star openers played intelligently by rotating the strike and frustrating the fielding side. Between 12-14 overs, Riyadh Blues tightened their bowling and at one stage, JMIAA needed 40 runs off the last 5 overs, but the batsmen plundered 14 runs and that left only 26 runs in the last 4 overs. When the score was 120 and only another 34 runs were required, Ejaz was run out by a direct throw from deep mid wicket. Ejaz made valuable 47 runs off 30 balls and ensured strong foundation for the victory. After the dismissal of Ejaz, Mudassir alias Inzi came to the crease and rotated strike to give more chance to in form Mushtaq. Mohammed Mushtaq (fondly called Mushi) remained unbeaten on 80 runs and scored the winning boundary to long off on the last ball of the 17th over while 9 wickets were intact. Mushtaq has made 437 runs at an impressive average of 145 in 6 innings of the tournament so far with 2 centuries and 2 fifties while remaining unbeaten 3 times. This was a big win considering the semi final stage and strong Riyadh Blues team. The playing team included Moin, Nisar, Mushtaq, Ejaz, Javed, Mudassir, Imran, Mustafa, Jabir, Razwi, Zabiullah and Rahbar. Tauqeer deserves special mention as he cheered the team from the stands through the entire match. The match report will be published in Riyadh dailies in the coming days. Many Congratulations to all the players of JMIAA team and all Jamiaites. JMI Zindabaad !!JMIAA Rocks!! Nisar A. Khan
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 20:45:29 +0000