Finals
Match Report
UAH CC vs. MSU CC Final match report
by Staff WriterHuntsville. October 04, 2004.
The much awaited and anticipated cricket tournament in the history of UAH cricket Club finally came to a close with a summit clash between the two best teams of the tournament; the hosts UAH and their arch-rivals Mississippi State University. As is always the case, there was yet another intense battle to come out on top and UAH showed that they are a great force to reckon with in the South East.
Both teams had scored convincing victories against their opponents in the semifinals and were all charged up for the finals. MSU were eager to payback UAH for defeating them at home in July and UAH wanted to play both the perfect host and the ultimate team of the tournament. This set up an exciting finale, which started at 215pm on a bright sunny day.
MSU won the toss and put UAH in to bat. It was an awesome start from Mississippi bowlers especially Dipesh. There was great enthusiasm and aggression on the part of the bowlers and fielders and UAH slowly felt the pressure building up. In addition the wicket had some odd balls keeping low and UAH really had a fight on their hands. They began well with the skipper Ved starting of in great style with a smashing cover drive for four but was bowled to a ball that just shot through. Manish, the star of the semifinal victory against Tennessee Tech got out for a duck and it was up to Kalpesh and Joel to steady the ship. They did the repair job admirably before Kalpesh tried one shot too many on a two paced wicket and was bowled. Atul then played a few great shots to ease the pressure but again lost his wicket at the most inopportune moment. The next batsman in was Madan, who on his part had a wretched tournament batting wise so far. However, UAH were saved by a decent hard fought partnership between Madan and Saket, which calmed the nerves in the UAH camp. Saket got out, courtesy to a direct hit from point by Dakshesh. Madan, along with some good contributions from Bala and Sameer took the team score to 77 of the allotted 20 overs.
UAH knew they had a tough fight on their hands while defending a low score of 77. However, great aggression from the team saw them off to a great start with Kalpesh and Madan bowling their hearts out. Madan picked up a wicket in each of his first three overs to put MSU on the back foot and Praveen picked up one more to put MSU on the defensive by the end of 10 overs. The 11th over of the game probably brought UAH back into the game when Madan bowled their captain Kris and Kalpesh brought a stunner down the leg side to see the back of Chandru. Once their last hope Arun was dismissed by some smart bit of fielding by Raj, it was just a matter of time before UAH aided by some awesome captaincy from Ved and supported magnificently on the field by his players polished off the rest of the MSU batting line up. In the end, probably the best team of the tournament lifted the Fall ‘04 Challenger trophy winning the finals by 19 runs.
UAH were the deserved winners of the trophy. Although their batting was shaky all through the tournament, their bowling and fielding were top class and probably won them the title.
Many awards were presented to cricketers who showed exemplary performance, attitude, grit and determination to win throughout the tournament. The awards were as follows...