8th May, 2021, Morgan Hill.
Cougars 55/2 in 10.2 overs (Narsingh Deonarine 22*, Ruchir Joshi 2/27) beat Blazers 54 in 21.4 overs (Neeraj Goel 5/19, Tariq Mohammed 3/16) by 8 wickets.
Blazers won the toss and elected to bat first. But as the first innings commenced, no one would have expected Blazers would be bowled out for a mere 54 after playing just 21.4 overs. Blazers never showed intent throughout the innings, they surrendered against a good bowling attack of Cougars. Only one batsman could manage to reach the double-figure mark, Nihal Desai remained the top scorer in first innings with 18 runs. Credit goes to the bowling trio of Tariq, Neeraj and Asad. They never let any batsman settle down, Neeraj Goel and Tariq crushed the top-order by dismissing top five batsmen while Asad also grabbed a couple of wickets. Neeraj Goel bowled excellently for his fifer while Tariq sent three batsmen to the pavilion.
Now, Cougars came out to chase the total, they were also given an early hiccup as both their opening batsmen were dismissed cheaply. But since then, Narsingh Deonarine and Saqib Saleem did the rest of the formalities and won the game for Cougars in 10.2 overs.
Strikers 128/5 in 39.5 overs (Gary Graham 35, Harmeet Singh 2/21) beat Grizzlies 127 in 40.5 overs (Abhi Singh 23, Vatsal Vaghela 3/26, Abbas Jafri 2/18) by 5 wickets.
The Strikers had to chase down a small target of 128 runs in 50 overs. They were given some early blows in the form of William Perkins and Rohit Ramkumar, but they had a cushion of chasing a small total, so they weren't worried much. Gary Graham played his part by contributing 35 runs, he played as many as 87 deliveries and hit just a single boundary. Down the order, Dilpreet's unbeaten 24 helped Cougars win the game comfortably. Harmeet and Unmukt tried their best to defend the tiny total, their figures were 2/21 and 1/15 respectively. They were supported by Shivam Mishra and Abhi Singh who also picked a wicket each.
