Match Report 10 Jul 11: Crni Zmajevi Cricket Club vs DazBurg's Greatness (one day friendly)

 Time has come to our first test match before the season kick starts. Manager verdi organized a friendly with a higher rated opponent on this humid afternoon. DazBurg's Greatness hails from Scotland, where their one day squad competes in division 3. They pretty much out rate us in all aspects of the game, plus we are playing with a mad bowling line up (to test our fast bowlers on slow pitch). The weather also affects our squad, since we are not the best in terms of endurance. The  line ups were the following:

 DazBurg's won the toss and decided to bat first. The opening spells had our two young fast-bowlers on, Dharmaratna Amalean and Alamgir Zia. The match started as a nightmare, as DazBurg's scored 76 runs in just 10 overs. Amalean's ER was awful, although he managed to steal a wicket in the 10th. Farrell managed to drag us a little bit closer, with a maiden and some low score overs.Our wicket taking today was beyond awful, we failed to take their wickets early, which would have been crucial since they have played without all rounders. The medium pacers managed to lower their run rate, but with captain Mazin's bad ER, it proved to be in vain. They have ended their innings with a huge 312 runs. We had a lot of misfields and dropped 3 balls. It was obvious it's nearly impossible to chase down this, and it proved to be true. Our innings started slowly, and we lost both openers by the 10th over.Abolhassan got out first with only 14 runs, van Onselen followed him shortly by the 10th over, with 21 runs from 29 balls. Even though we had a very long batting line up, at this point we needed a miracle to come closer to DazBurg's. By the break we were at 91/5:

With only 5 wickets in hand and 222 to climb in just 25 overs, all we could hope for is to shrink the margin, and minimize the loss.Bernard and Anwar was up to bat. The young batsman and our old favourite AR made the team's best partnership today, with a combined 58. We were struggling until the end, after Anwar's departure only Mazin managed to score some, with a decent strike rate. DazBurg's lethal top order and killing bowlers proved to be a mission impossible for our team. DazBurg's Greatness won by 137 runs.

 Positives are the batting performance of Anwar and Mazin (who struggled at bowling though), Farrell had a decent debut game. Endurance is still a concern for this season, especially for Amalean. He will probably get more chances in the Twenty20 team. Next time it's going for real, the opening Twenty20 game against YOUNG GUNNERZ. We need to improve a lot, especially in batting. Go Dragons!