Last leg of the league starts this weekend where top 16 teams battle it out for platinum, next 16 for gold and others for silver and rankings.
A year back making to Gold would had been considered as an achievement by the team but one year into competitive cricket, expectations have changed and not being able to make it to platinum still hurts! things cannot be turned back but lessons surely learned and there is no option for the team except to show the opponents what we are capable off in this gold event.
Match Details:
Home Game
Sunday, Aug 23rd
Start time: 8:30 am PST
Current form:
RCPC: L L L W W
Real Cricket Players Club (if you were wondering what RCPC meant :) ) has a 50% winning record in their stint so far at cricbay. They had a fantastic 1st round finishing with 32 points and a win ratio of 80%. They even managed to beat giants like Nemesis, Hattrickers to mention a few. However despite such promising 1st round RCPC failed to perform same magic in the platinum qualifiers. They fared miserably in the qualifiers managing to loose all their three encounters in Round 2 and managing to achieve a modest score of 39 in their last two encounters.
Blitz CC: W L L W L
Blitz on the other hand didn't fare too well either in the second round. They were humbled by Spartans CC and lack of application saw them loosing to Exterminators whom they had beaten convincingly in Round 1. Only respite to the situation was brought when they beat Nemesis on their home ground in their best ever run chase for a win.
Watch for:
Viral Vimawala : Highest scorer for RCPC in both round 1 and round 2, he according to me is numero uno in their batting ranks.This opener has managed to average at 20.4 and 11.67 in round 1 and round 2 respectively which is decent achievement for cricbay standards. Whenever he has given RCPC a good start they have either managed to pile on a big score or chase out the opposition score with rather ease.
Deepak Mehta: Wow! is what came out when i saw figures of 6/12 in 4 overs from this left armer in round 1 vs East Indies.
An interesting fact came out during analysis of his stats was that he tends to bowl Extras at a rate of 0.9 an over! i.e. 90% of the times he will bowl an extra in a over. This is quite a high number in any form of cricket, interestingly Blitz is not that far behind with the highest rate of extra being 0.86 (it is better i don't take any names :)
Criteria: Bowler has bowled 50 overs or more.
X Factor:
Darshak Randeria: Fellow USCite, have played with him outside libraries at school, always gave an impression of carrying loads of talent. In my findings i think this RCPC allrounder had a rather quite 2009 season, unlike his first season where he showed some fireworks with bat slamming 60 of 47 balls against HitnRun. Despite this on-off season it is not advisable to take this guy lightly, he is one player who can easily change the game in his teams favor with either bat or bowl.
Head-to-Head
Played: 1
RCPC Won: 1
Last time both these teams played each other, it was nothing short of a disaster for Blitz! Playing with a team of 10, it was needed that every person puts in 10% extra to make up for a missing player. Keep that extra 10% aside, the team failed to even give their 100% after choosing to bat. Blitz collapsed like a pack of cards and were humbled out by RCPC for a meagre total of 32.
It was chased without any sort of pressure and the game was over in half the time it should have.
However, Blitz did manage to get some pride back when they demolished RCPC in a practice game which followed after the actual match. But Blitz needs to set the 'official' record straight and return victorious this sunday.
Let's taste the sweetness of victory, to raise the stakes higher, a revenge-victory!
Blitzz'em boys!
Go Blitz!
~ j
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