San Diego bounce back with an excellent effort on the field

SD3 had an outstanding day on the field today against Inland Empire. The week was a terrible week from personnel stand point as we had to recruit new blood to make up the team due to unavailabilities and injuries. We had 4 new players in the team and were without our captain Arshad, Sakthi stepped up to take the responsibility and did a wonderful job. We won the toss and elected to bowl...as is usually the case with our side...better bowling team. Started off with a beautiful first over from Shiva with a wicket maiden....Fanil (new player) started off well too and complemented Shiva with some controlled and economical bowling, he was unlucky to not get any wickets (due to some dropped catches) but with Shiva leading the wicket taking effort all Fanil had to do was support him and he did a fabulous job. Shiva got another break through and by the end of their spell we had Inland Empire 10 overs..24/2....Suneel and Raju P (new player) came in as first change bowlers....Raju making his debut got a wicket with his third ball uprooting the middle stump....that was a treat to watch...little did we know that we were going to watch some exceptional stuff from him...he just took over the game and got a wicket almost in every over of his to finish with 7/17 in 6.2 overs....a stupendous effort for any level of cricket....beautiful piece of bowling from him...all of us were witness to a performance that is not a every day occurence on the cricket field. Ajay...the other new comer...didnt want to be left behind and added with a beautiful wicket of his own...he bowled the batsman with a peach...all in all we were able to get the opposition out for 58 runs !!!!!!!!!!!!! thats the lowest total in a game that I have been involved in (30 overs or more)......we got them out in 24 overs....a clinical performance on the field by SD3... We didnt want to repeat the same mistakes that we made during our last low scoring loss against the same team in the season opener so Sakthi asked all the batsman to play positively. It was a great confidence booster to have the team's leading scorer, Raju S, back in the line up....the batting looks a lot more assured when he is in there....Ajay and he opened the innings and got us off to a good start before Ajay fell for a dubious decision. In walked Tejuswi..Another new recruit....he started playing some lovely drives and lofted the ball before perishing to a slower ball...all of a sudden it seemed to be a similar story of batting collapse when Vinit fell without scoring...and the bowlers bowling a tight line without giving anything away…..runs had dried up….Sakthi then made a smart move and sent Shiva up the order....Shiva played some attacking shots that brought the momentum back to SD with Raju playing steadily at the other end....they brought us home in 14 overs....for no more loss of wickets...all in all it was a well earned victory that the team has been waiting for....