IISc's woes continue

5th September, 2009, IISc Gymkhana Ground, Bangalore: Team IISc's poor run continued as they managed to lose their third match on the trot. The latest loss was in a practice match against Sangam Cricketers. The problem area was lackluster fielding and spineless batting yet again. The visitors batted first and posted a competitive score of 245 that included a fluent half-century from one-down batsman, Shibu and a breezy 48 by Deepak. In all, four catches were dropped in Sangam's innings while close to thirty runs were conceded through sloppy fielding.

IISc's reply started out well but soon got derailed with six wickets falling with hardly 70 on board. In a commendable rear-guard action, the seventh wicket alliance of Sounik and Debajit brought IISc back into the game playing contrasting innings. Sounik continued his purple patch with the bat to compile a masterful 86 while Debajit played an ideal foil silently rotating the strike. But, once both of them were dismissed, the rest of the lower order went down fighting ultimately falling 12 runs short.

There's a silver-lining though in that there has been a slow but steady improvement over the course of the three losses. The team totals in the last three matches at least show an upward trend- 118, 169 and 234. Also, two of the three lost matches were only practice games. The next league match (vs Merchant's CC on 12th Sept) holds the key to IISc's fortunes in this year's edition of the league. Will they regroup in time? Will they bounce back? Only time will tell.

Brief Scores:
Sangam Cricketers - 245/10 in 50 overs
(Shibu 62, Deepak 48, Pal 2/45, Teja 2/45)
IISc Gymkhana - 234/10 in 47.5 overs
(Sounik 86, Shimjith 30, Raghavendra 3/60)

Result: Sangam Cricketers won by 11 runs
Man-of-the-match: Sounik Saha