Washington Cricket Club

Overnight rain in Baltimore messed up one side of the newly laid wicket at Pimlico. Game was delayed as the pitch and bowler's run-ups were rendered 
un-playable. Lot of hard work put in by both sides as we all had travelled for over an hour to get a game. Viral lost the toss and WCC was put into bat. Given the heavy outfield may have been a good idea but given the terrible bowling run-ups, not so much.

Tarun(45) and Raj(17) yet again gave us an excellent start of 45 runs on the board. TC's first game at Pimlico but the way he batted it seemed as if it was his home ground ;) Both played sensibly and fluently. Once Raj got out to a ball keeping low, Palash(0) too perished the next ball. Then came in Vijay(14) making his debut in these harsh conditions. He looked comfortable right from the start and took the attack to the bowlers. He lost his wicket to one of the best off-spinners we have seen in our league Enayet who went onto take Viral (7) and Tarun's wickets too. Taran(6) started well with his singles but soon played a half-hearted shot to throw away his wicket. Soon after came our second debutant Ravi Teja(22) alongwith Jagan(35) to score freely and took the bowlers to the cleaners. Ravi got out to a bad LBW call by the umpire as the ball hit the top of his pads and he being 6'2" that was a bad call ;)Nevertheless Murali(4) and Ankit(4) did the best they could with the remaining balls as Sunil did not get a chance to bat.

Finally 193 for 8 it was in 30 overs. A steep target to chase against WCC's bowling/fielding attack and that too at Pimlico.

Gladiators started their run chase a bit too cautiously as our opening bowlers Jagan and Murali troubled their batsmen who couldn't put bat on ball. Murali 
particularly was at his best and finished off with figures of 5-2-4-2. As the ball was still moving Viral continued the pace attack with a lot more 
pace in form of Ravi and Vijay. Cheers to all these guys who had some pathetic bowling run-ups to deal with. Viral and Ankit came along but the usual didnot 
happen as Viral bowled with an injured shoulder and Ankit was unusually wayward. Sunil replaced Viral and picked up a couple of wickets with the help of Ankit in the deep and a well deserved LBW. Ankit got it right to take out an ex-USA U-19 player with a beauty as he was batting fluently. Murali bowled another spell-bound spell to wrap things up. Taran and Tarun soon joined the party towards the end and took out the tail.

Overall fielding and wicket keeping was good. No easy catches were dropped and we bagged a couple of runouts alongwith two amazing catches by Murali and Ankit.
Gave away too many extras that we need to work on that but again the conditions and strict umpiring also added a lot to it.

Good start to the season but we all need to do better.