CCC v LSWCC Warriors

At Po Kong Village Road 2 ground, Saturday January 6th 2007.

Following the Christmas and New Year break the first match of 2007 saw LSW Warriors meet Craigengower Cricket Club (CCC) in a top of the table(LSW) versus bottom of the table (CCC) clash.

Warriors won the toss and elected to bat first. Warriors captain, Azhar Illahi, promoted Moner Dar and Henry Siu to open the innings for this match. After the game Azhar explained that he moved Henry up the batting order so as to Give him a bit of a chance, as quite frequently he doesnot get the chance to bat.

Azhar might well have wondered about this decision when Henry was out for 8 runs and was quickly followed by number 3 bat, Zain Abbas, for only 6 runs. However, at that point Azhar himself arrived at the crease and the ship was well and truly steadied. The captain was in good form driving the ball beautifully and playing his trade-mark square drive. On 58 runs he mistimed a pull shot and was out caught by Wallace off the bowling of Evans. Moner put in another of his sturdy and steady innings accumulating 70 runs before he too was out to a catch, this time by Sunny. Rangazib, who managed to score 26 runs not out, also played well for the Warriors. At the end of 33 overs Warriors had scored 196 runs and with 23 extras had a total of 219.

Bowling honours for CCC go to M. Ahmed who took 3 wickets for only 34 runs off 7 overs.

Given the relative standard of the opposition, Warriors had shown a relaxed attitude toward the batting. It was then the turn of the bowlers to get stuck in and finish off the match. Warriors bowled very tidily throughout the CCC innings, who showed very little resistance to the attack they faced. Surprisingly it wasnot until after the twelfth over that Warriors' got a wicket, but they were also very economical over in terms of the runs CCC managed to score. At the end of their innings CCC had scored only 119 runs which when the extras were added gave them a total of only 142.

Moner and Zain returned the best bowling figures for Warriors. As well scoring 70 runs, Moner took 3 wickets for 42 runs off 10 overs.

Warriors won the match by 77 runs and can anticipate remaining at the top of the league when the first table for 2007 is published by the HKCA.

Kashif Dar LSWCC Honorary Secretary said after the match. It was nice to see that Warriors started the New Year on winning note.