Triumph for Markhor and six wickets for Avinash

By Richard Boxall
Markhor pulled off a surprise win over the current T20 champions Sri Lanka Lions, in Sunday’s round of matches in the 2023 CCA BAOFinancial Spring T10 Cup at Ypsonas cricket ground.

After modest success as a new entrant to the Cyprus cricket league last year, Markhor appear to have strengthened their team, and will have ambitions to do well in this competition.

Despite great bowling figures of 2-8 from 2 overs by the Lions’ Srinath Rajith, Markhor compiled a decent score of 109-7, with 29 from Hamza Rehman and a vital 33 not out off just 14 balls by number 8 Awais Ahmed.

Even after Akila De Silva’s 30 off 19 balls, Sri Lanka Lions failed to keep up with the required run rate, and by the end of the 7th over their score stood at 54-3, with another 56 runs required from the last three overs. Srinath Rajith and captain Nalin Pathirana made a spirited attempt, hitting 17 off the 8th over and 21 off the 9th, so that the final over arrived with 18 still needed, a difficult but not impossible task.

Waqas Akhtar, who had earlier removed Akila, was given the responsibility of bowling the over, and made an inspired start by dismissing both batsmen on his first two balls – running out Srinath for 28 and then bowling Nalin for 15. Nine runs came from the next three balls before another wicket on the last, leaving the Lions on 101-6. Waqas had the great figures of 3-13 and Markhor triumphed by 8 runs.

Amdocs also topped the 100 mark, scoring 105-4 against King’s XI Punjab. Skipper Chaitas Shah hit 50 from 24 balls to get his team off to a great start, but his was not the main contribution to Amdocs’ eventual victory.

For the Punjabi team Rajinder Kumar, who had taken 2-15 with the ball, scored 28 and put on 47 for the first wicket with Ravi Gill in the first 4 overs. But the game turned dramatically when Avinash Rane came on to bowl. In his two overs of quickish off-spin he took 6 wickets for just two runs.

His first over began and ended with a wicket, with two singles in between. He completed his hat-trick with two wickets at the start of his second over, followed by another to make it four in four balls. He ended the over with another wicket to complete a four-wicket maiden – and no doubt the most successful bowling of his cricketing career.

King’s XI reached the end of their 10 overs on 88-9, losing by 17 and perhaps wondering what they might have achieved without Avinash’s remarkable spell.

In the day’s other game Limassol Bangladeshis found themselves up against the formidable Punjab Lions. Opener Jiban Jahangir made 21 to help them to 74-7. They found life difficult against Kulwinder Singh who took 2-2, and there were also two wickets for Tejwinder Singh and Sukhwinder Singh.

For the Lions Neeraj Tiwari (22) and Zeeshan Mehmood (21) seemed to have the situation under control, but the loss of a few wickets – with Jowel Mia taking 2-4 from 2 overs – saw them slip to 61-5. However the last 14 runs came quickly as they reached their target of 75 without further loss with almost two overs to spare.

Next weekend sees three more games on Sunday and two on Green Monday, after which all but one of the competing teams will have played at least one game as they strive to qualify for the knockout stages of the competition.