Hassan Tigers 74/6 in 12 overs (Vishwanath 27, Sumanth 22, Sudhir 3/14) lost to Coastel Challengers 75/5 in 11.3 overs (Ashwajith 18, Ganesh 17, Ganesh 1/12) by 5 wickets
Coastal challengers carried forward their domination into the finals of Bhima Cricket League 2019 as they vanquished the Hassan Tigers by 5 wickets at the HMT Ground-1, Bengaluru. The ‘fatafat’ format of 12 overs went on for two days, with full of drama and action. In the end it came down to the last over to finally have a team to call themselves as a champion.
Coastal Challengers won the toss and invited Hassan Tigers to bat first. In a tournament where most of the targets were defended, this decision was a courageous one. Challengers surely had faith in their batting lineup that chased down three targets in the tournament and that too, with a lot of authority. Sumanth (22 off 26) and Ganesh (13 off 18) got them off to a steady start but just when the team needed some acceleration, they perished. A couple of ducks didn’t help their cause and they failed to accelerate in the middle overs either. Vishwanath, the skipper of Hassan Tigers played a crucial role with his 27 off 19 as they posted a healthy 74 in their quota of 12 overs.
The second inning began with some drama; well a tennis ball game is never ever short of some drama at any stage. Dikshit caught Pavan short of his crease off the very second ball as he was trying to steal a quick single. The first inning hero, Vishwanath removed Pavan via a nasty Yorker soon after. Ashwajith (18) departed soon and a SOS signal must have been sent out to the Challengers dressing room after his departure.
Vishwas (15) and Ganesh (17) added 21 for the fourth wicket but just when it looked like that the Challengers are going to walk pass the target easily, Ganesh threw away his wicket to his namesake, Ganesh. Although the target was still 27 runs away, a lot of balls were still remaining in the bag. Vishwas held the fort along with Rakshit and sailed them over the line with two balls remaining in the inning.
