Bidar City XI 91/6 in 10 overs (Shekhar 37, Prashant 29, Nitin 3/8) lost to GWAN CC 95/6 in 9 overs (Gautham 30, Anil 14, Shantanu 2/23, Prashant 2/23) by 4 wickets
The curtains were downed on the Manoj Pawar Memorial trophy 2019 with a high voltage final contested between Bidar City XI and GWAN CC at the R.S.Ground. The table toppers from both the groups were up against each other to battle it out for one last time, a battle that was going to decide the result of the war.
GWAN CC won the toss and elected to field first. The Bidar City XI made a quick recovery after losing Lokesh for a three ball duck in the very first over. The T-10 format never allows a comeback, at least nine out of ten times. After a decent powerplay, the Bidar City XI collapsed. They lost four wickets for just seven runs in the space of 12 balls and were desperately looking for a partnership. While Shekhar held the fort from one end, he needed someone to stay on the other end and that’s where Shantanu joined the party. The pair added 40 runs for the sixth wicket and the Bidar city XI were back in the game.
A target of 92 or more was chased only thrice in the tournament prior to this game. That’s 3 out of 32 so statically speaking, the GWAN CC had approximately 1/10 chance of chasing it down. But if you go through the campaign of GWAN CC in details, you will realize that they have gunned down the scores of 125 twice in the tournament already. Their chase begins in a pretty similar manner to their opposition as they lost Vishnukant for a duck in the very first over and they lost another on the last ball of the powerplay with 29 on board.
For a moment, it looked like as if they are willing to copy and paste the first inning efforts of their opposition. Post powerplays, they lost two back to back wickets in the fourth over and found themselves on the verge of a collapse but Gautham and Aleem steadied their ship. The pair added 40 off just 22 balls before Aleem was dismissed in the 8th over. Rajkumar came in and fulfilled the formality with a quickfire 13 with the help of two glorious cover drives.
