T20 Mumbai League: Triumph Knights forces a win, Supersonics thumps Tigers

After losing the opener first ball, last year’s winner Knights eventually posted 162 with opener Sumit Ghadigaonkar and the others in Parikshit Valsangkar, Yadav, Karan More and Akash Parkar rising to the occasion by hitting together 14 fours and four sixes.

Akash Parkar’s outstanding all-round display proved to be the telling difference in the contest.

A decent crowd turned up at the `D’ Road venue to watch the local club cricketers in action on the fifth day of the T20 Mumbai at the Wankhede Stadium on Saturday. Only in its second season, the league has grown in size with two more teams added to the inaugural year’s six. This has opened up opportunities for the local talent.

In the first four days a handful of new names, including Arjun Tendulkar, son of the celebrated Sachin, was in action bowling left-arm medium pace and striking big blows with the bat. Then the IPL stars Suryakumar Yadav, Shreyas Iyer and Prithvi Shaw also made their presence felt. The notable absentee has been Ajinkya Rahane who is busy for English County Hampshire at Rose Bowl.

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Primarily the league is also about the maidan cricketers who sweat it out almost right through the year in club and office tournaments. With each and every match of the league telecast live on Star Sports and also having watched the IPL-12, some of the lesser known batsmen and bowlers have tried to show their newly-acquired skill and make an impact; just like the Thane Strikers seamer Kruthik Hanagavadi who struck in the first ball making Triumph Knights left hander Karan Shaw nick to keeper Aditya Tare.

After losing the opener first ball, last year’s winner Knights eventually posted 162 with opener Sumit Ghadigaonkar and the others in Parikshit Valsangkar, Yadav, Karan More and Akash Parkar rising to the occasion by hitting together 14 fours and four sixes.  The Strikers made inroads, but the Knights still managed to give itself a chance of winning the first match in three.  It made 147 for 6 against Akash Tigers and 143 for eight against SOBO Supersonics and lost.

Resuming action after the break, the Knights removed two key batsmen, Tare and Sarfaraz Khan by the 11th over and took control of the match. Seamer Parkar, who had impressed in some Ranji Trophy and limited over matches for Mumbai, made it an emphatic dismissal (bowled) of Kings XI Punjab’s Sarfaraz. But the bowler of the evening for the Knights was left arm spinner Yash Dicholkar; he got rid of  Sagar Mishra, Aditya Tare and Sachin Wagh as the Strikers declined to 58 for five and eventually lost the match by 38 runs.