Cricket: Curtain-riaser: Mike Holmes Memorial Tournament-Debutant Dheeraj scripts victory for Vijay |12 March 2005

Patrick Thomas, Team Vijay captain, won the toss and elected to bat first on a bright sunny day. USAIM couldn’t have hoped for a better start than when their new ball bowler Siddesh caught opening batsman Kaushal’s first ball of the tournament. That was to be the only positive display of the day for USAIM.

Patrick then joined Vishram at the crease and together they worked the ball around for singles and twos without taking any risk. With the score on 29, Vishram went for a straight drive but could not clear the fielder at long on and was caught by Niraj.

Arvind then joined Patrick and together they took the score to 79 when Arvind was cleaned bowled by Rizwan for 27 runs. With the scorecard at 79 for the lost of 3 with and half the over completed, in walked Dheeraj on his debut and he immediately got into his stride with a two gully region and then pulled six over the square leg umpire.

In the meantime, Vijay’s captain Patrick eased his way to 50. Dheeraj then took over, hitting four 6s and five 4s before losing his captain who had scored 55. By then, the floodgates had opened and Dheeraj on 84 was run out in a mix-up with Vesudev.

Dheeraj’s entertaining 84 and Patrick’s 55 helped bring Vijay’s innings of 30 overs for a total of 213.
With a run rate of 7 runs an over, it was always going to be an uphill task for the college boys but as always they showed some courage and took the fight to Vijay even after losing Akshay who was bowled by Vasudev with the scorecard reading 1 run.

Rahul added some resistance with a hard-hitting 35 but was carelessly run out, having forgotten to ground his bat from a direct hit from Vinod. Girish put his head down and led the chase with a stubborn 51. Then, it was Dheeraj’s turn to show his skills with the ball with a devastating spell of 6 overs, 6 wickets and conceded only 21 runs. By the time Dheeraj had finished, USAIM were all out for 165 after just 27 overs.

For his overall display with both bat and ball, Dheeraj received the man-of-the-match award.
Scorecard: Team Vijay innings ( Dheeraj 85, Patrick 55,  Niraj : 2 for 19)
                USAIM innings (Girish 55, Rahul 35, and Dheeraj: 6 for 21)