Victoria posts an easy victory over Orange County

By Rishit Shetty
Full Scorecard
To summarize this match one line would suffice – Orange County was hit by a thunder bolt, the thunder bolt had a name tag ‘Victoria’. But that would not be fair to the effort of the 11 players and the supporters of Victoria.
 
First innings:
Sudhakar and Rajan gave Victoria a near-perfect start. Took away the swing from the new ball and managed a healthy run-rate. After Sudhakar fell, Salman and Rajan made sure they don’t lose wickets in a hurry. Rajan was unlucky to get out on a dolly which probably hit a touch higher on his bat. OC contained the run flow pretty well during this period. That was probably the only time OC had some control over the match.
Sakthish fell to a bouncer, Salman could not make the most of the start he got unfortunately. Rishit fell cheaply to his own stupidity. While all this was happening, Nalin kept his cool. Curbed his natural instincts and saved the big hits for the poor deliveries. He couldn’t have asked for better company then Ravi who was displaying some great form. Kittu had little time to get himself in but his 2-run a ball innings was invaluable to the team. Bharat hardly got a ball to face but did his best. Victoria managed 181 which the bowling attack was pretty confident of defending.
 
Second Innings:
Sudhakar’s short run-up boosted the over-confidence in OC. Their coach had forgotten to teach them about facing swing bowling. Outrageous swing by Sudha was too much for OC to handle. Two openers were taken out by him including a sharp catch in the slips by Venky. Salman was the most unfortunate of the bowlers. He surely did deserve more wickets than his figures. OC were probably hoping against hope that the bowlers to come would be below par. Rishit begins with unscrewing one of the batsman’s helmet. So he was out of the below par bowling list. Then, comes Nalin, who topped the ‘I can’t see the ball’ list. Stumps were rattled, umpire raised his finger a few times and a comedy of errors led to two run-outs (one of which Rishit ‘selfishly and funnily’ kept all for himself and the other was stupidity from an OC player to test Nalin’s arm). Venky aka ‘hush-hush’ after approximately 3 yrs; took his time to get settled but he did produce some beauties which caught edges of the bat that the slips could not gather; else there would have been wickets in his kitty too. OC was swept off clean under a three digit score.
 
Nalin’s half-century and 3 wickets undisputedly made him the man of the match. Ravi’s innings and ‘palm-swelling’ keeping must be given special recognition. So does, Sudha’s all-round performance and Victoria’s honest supporters.