Ashu Warriors 95/3 in 8.1 overs (Aditya Singhal 55*, Alok 28, Suraj Mehta 2/10) beat Backstreet 11 91 in 14.2 overs (Kazim 19, Sanjay Thakur 3/9, Arvind Gupta 2/26) by 7 wickets.
The final of the Scoring Willows Premium Season 5 was perfectly placed as two desrving sides clashed with each other.
Apart from it, the day became more emotional as a very veteran cricketer in Vivek Kumar was bidding farewell to his 12 years career. It was the Ashu Warriors who one the toss and elected to field first. They didn't let even a single batsman to settle down, they kept grabbing wickets and eventually bowled out Backstreet 11 for a small total 91.
Now it was the turn of Ashu Warriors to chase down 92 runs in 120 deliveries. Aditya Singhal and Davender Kumar came out to open the chase. As soon as the second innings began, Ashu Warriors lost Davender on the very first ball of innings. But since then, it was a one-side show, Aditya and Alok together added 84 runs for the second wicket and left nothing for Backstreet 11. Aditya played superbly for his unbeaten 55 off just 25 balls while Alok made sure they not lose any more wickets. Alok made a valuable contribution of 28 runs for his team. In the end, Ashu Warriors chased down the total in just 8.1 overs to become the champions of Scoring Willows Premium.
In the first innings, captain Vinod Chauhan and Prabhat Singh came out to open the innings for Backsreet 11. They couldn't keep the run-flow going, courtesy some good bowling from Ashu Warriors. In fact, Backstreet 11 were not able to settle down on the crease, Sanjay Thakur bowled excellently for his 3 for 9, while Arvind and Atul also picked up a couple of wickets each. The score of 19 from the bat of Kazim was the highest among all the batsmen. In the end, they were able to play just 14.2 overs before getting bundled out for just a 91.
Now talking about some stats of the season.
The top run-scorer was Manish Bhati who scored 258 runs in four innings. Mohit Sethi was the top wicket-taker with 9 wickets in 5 innings.
This match was special not only in terms of final but also it was the last match of legendary Vivek Kumar. He was a cyber security specialist by profession who started playing club cricket in 2009. Then, he started a club called Scoring Willows Cricket Club which he took that at international level as well. His club has played against teams in Bangkok and Malaysia twice. He has also represented a few core corporate cricket teams like RSystems and HCL. He used to be a top order batsman alrounder with right arm spin. He has always taken cricket as his passion. However, declared the end of it in his last match due to some family commitments.
So that was it from our side, hope you enjoyed it, see you in the next season, till then goodbye and cheers!
