Giants come out tops in low scoring Thriller

Hyderabad, March 24, 2008: The 20th match of the Edelweiss 20s Challenge was played at the sparkling new venue of the ICL at Tau Devi Lal Stadium, Gurgaon & featured the hosts Delhi Giants take on the powerful Hyderabad Heroes in a very important match for both sides fighting for a place in the semi final. Pat Symcox in his pitch report predicted an easy pace wicket favoring the batsmen.

Marvan Atapattu won the toss and elected to bat. In the end the Giants won the close encounter beating the Heroes by 7 runs. Dhruv Mahajan was declared Man of the Match.

The Giants came out to bat with their left–right hand combination of Gunawardene & Mishra. Both the openers' were off to a cautious start putting 18 on the board at the end of the 3rd over. Kemp got the first breakthrough in form of Mishra's wicket in the 4th over reducing the Giants to 22/1.

Young Dhruv Mahajan was making most of the opportunity provided to him as the no3 batsman & in company of the experienced Gunawardene took the Giants to a decent 61/1 at the end of the 9th over. Mahajan's promising innings of 36 came to an end in the 13thover while trying to increase the scoring rate of the bowling of Reddy. Gunawardene who played an uncharacteristically slow innings was foxed by Boje to reduce the Giants to 86/3 in the 14th over.

The 100 for the Giants came at the end of the 15th over with Abbas Ali & Bali at the wicket, looking to pick up the scoring rate in the last five overs of their innings. Two quick blows by Razzaq, sending Bali & JP Yadav back to the Delhi dugout in the 17th over, reduced the Giants to 115 / 5. The Giants could not get any momentum going & were finally restricted to 137/8 in their allotted 20overs.

The Heroes opened their reply with a new combination of Anirudh Singh & Shashank Nag. The combination however did not work with Nag back in the dugout after making only 3, reducing the Heroes to 4/1 in the 2nd over. Sudhindra's persistent line & length bowling helped him get his second scalp in the form of Anirudh Singh leaving the Heroes in a bit of a bother at 14/2.

By the 5th over, the Heroes were in big trouble at 17/4, brining the Giants right back in the match. At the half way mark of their innings, it was Binny & Kemp battling it out for the Heroes at 40/4, needing to score at over 9.5 runs per over to achieve the target of 138. Binny & Kemp were building a useful partnership of 50 runs off 47 balls, taking the score to 67 /4 in the 13th over.

Shane Bond came back for his second spell in the 15th over and got the Giants the big breakthrough sending back the dangerous Kemp back to the Heroes dugout for a well made 33. With 5 overs to go the Heroes needed 55 runs off only 30 balls at 11runs per over with Razzaq and Binny holding the key to the match. A brilliant piece of keeping in the 16th over from the young impressive Yagnik, who was replacing the experienced Pothas for this game, meant the end of the dangerous Razzaq leaving the Heroes scorecard reeling at 84/6.

The 2nd last over from Bond cost 16 runs which brought the match alive in the last over, with the Heroes needing 15 runs to win off 6 balls. It was the young Dhruv Mahajan who bowled the last over with a lot of composure and scalping the 2 key wickets of Binny & Harris to help Delhi scamper home by only 7runs.

Brief Scores:Delhi Giants 137/8 in 20 overs (Mahajan 36, Gunawardene28 Razzaq 4/23)won by 7 runs against Hyderabad Heroes 130/8 in 20overs(Binny50, Kemp 33, Sudhindra 3/25, Dhruv Mahajan 2/13)

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