Their lies the history of choking, faltering…looking straight into the eyes of devils...
Their lies the ground with a grin on its face to witness another loss
Their lies the typical Daredevils supporter’s dreaded look which appears to get resigned to a result which it felt is inevitable
Their lies the Final loss lying comfortably on the laps of daredevils and trying to cement its place in their team….
And finally their lies the Mighty Kemcho, reminding of Spartans in their demeanor, their most dangerous opponent faced so far in a final, to whom losing is never an option and winning is always at their disposal.
This is the scenario for devils awaiting their finals. They are not just fighting with the opponents, they are fighting with the history, with the ground, with the odds, with the apprehensions running in the minds of the spectators. A psychological and physical warfare is awaiting the tired soul of every daredevil. It just appears the past and present have got all the ingredients for manufacturing a loss to be delivered to devils in the future.
And the finale starts, balls bowled, catches dropped, runs taken, sixes scored, fours hit. The mood of the spectator is changing, the crowds are cheering. The batsman glances a single towards the square leg and that’s it…the ground erupts, so does the history and the spectators. The batsman catapults his bat, along with the stress and humiliation, accumulated over the years, into air only to be gone. None other than a daredevils player celebrates in such a style and that too performed by The Tendulkar of Daredevils, Sushant who is mostly reserved explains their desperation for a different outcome.
The adversaries turned out to be their allies. The worst has brought the best from Daredevils. That’s the typical nature of all champions. The team of champions has matured into a champion’s team. Right from the first ball bowled to the final single taken they played with such a surgical accuracy that a fielder from the deep midwicket has run as a backup to silly mid-on to run out the batsman in case the silly mid-on misses the catch and does so successfully.
Daredevils bowling first restricted the explosive batting of Kemcho with their accurate bowling to 58 Runs in 10 overs. The ball found itself hard to escape from fielder’s view. Daredevils after initially dropping crucial catches of Mayur and Krunal came back well by taking blinders. The fall of 3 wickets in 7th over stands as the proof of batting woes.Sushanth, Captain of the daredevils got all overs bowled by regular bowlers and not experimenting with part time bowlers. Raghu bowled excellent first over setting the platform for a low score innings.Fahim bowled brilliantly as usual so as Sushant. The surprise factor came from Sujan who so far is wicket less in the tournament troubled Kemcho right from his first over and bagged 3 wickets in his 2nd over totalling to 4 wickets and allowing only 6 runs in his spell of 3 overs.
Batting has always been a worry for Daredevils no matter how low the score is to be chased. They got stack full of good batsman but had no clue on the order of the batsmen to be sent.Their struggle against chasing a paltry 38 of 8overs in their first league match against USC proves the fact. They have been trying all permutations and combinations from the past 3 tournaments. From the fact that each and every player getting a chance to open the innings one can understand the extent to which they were perplexed. All these trials and errors has bought sujan to open the innings which turned out to be highly successful move. Sujan played a sehwag in final league match getting them to semis. The ease with which he rotated the strike and waiting for the right moment to hit the ball has sealed the fate of the result of the Final. The switch shot by him resulting in a six against Mayur Patel is the highlight of the match. Sushant took over the charge from sujan and accelerated the innings with the help of Fahim who had hit four right in his first ball.
With this result all Adjectives has switched the sides
And
They will be proud to stay next to Daredevils So the Daredevils
The Tournament ended with a thank you note from Sathya Kadali,President of TASC.Prizes were distributed with Sushant bagging player of the series, Mayur Patel of KemCho bagging Batsman of the Series and Sagar as Bowler of the Tournament . |
