Match Report 07 Jul 11: Crni Zmajevi Cricket Club vs Cheltenham CC (youth friendly)

Cheltenham played at Crni Zmajevi's home ground. The conditions were overcast/uneven, so that gave some advantage to the seamers. The line ups were the following:

Cheltenham lost the toss and Miran Haider decided to bat first. Crni Zmajevi started their innings.  Runs were flowing slowly in the first 10 overs (RR 4.90), when the partnership of Usama Ali and Amit Shankar scored 19 runs. Run Rate kept on raising till the mid break, Crni Zmajevi batted strong, while losing only 1 wicket. From the 21st over run rate started to drop a little, but Chandrasena stepped up at batted brilliantly in the last 10 overs. Innings ended with 278-3.
  After a short break, Cheltenham started their innings, but couldn't do much to stop our excellent bowling attack (after 10 runs: 32-3). Thanks to some fielding mistakes they managed to improve their run rate a little, but the late spells turned out to be lethal for them: Sean Adams took 3 wickets, Ashe Kumble did two maidens, and Usama Ali finished them off at 33.6.

The two teams were miles away from each other. Manager verdi wanted to measure up the current strength of the squad, since many players went into the senior squad this season. There was some excellent performances, batting was strong, Usama Ali scored 70 runs from 68 balls, Brad Decker 62 from 52, and Chandrasini Chandrasena finished with an excellent strike rate of 186.96 and 43 runs. On the bowling side, the two best performers were Sean Adams with excellent economy rate (3.00) and 3 wickets. Along with Qadim Najjar's 2.6 ER and 2 taken wickets.Fielding was alright, wicketkeeper Usama Ali can be proud of his 3 catches and 1 stumpings. All rounders performed well. All in all, this was a good build up game for the upcoming season. Next week we'll see how well this guys can perform in competitive matches.