28/02/2015
We witnessed the battle of the two best teams in KCL 2015, Royal Starks and Knight Walkers. At the end of a closely fought match, Royal Starks came out on top to clinch the KCL Championship of 2015.
Royal Starks won the toss and decided to bat first. Their opening pair which had contributed well throughout fell cheaply. Nikhil, Siddharth and Partha bowled really well in the initial phase of the innings. Then the innings was steadied by a good partnership between Hrishikesh and Ranjeet. Hrishikesh got out while trying to whack Nithin out of the ground only to find Siddharth at mid-off. However, Ranjeet continued to play sensibly and made useful 26 runs. He got out while trying to push the run rate up and Shekhar followed him in the very next ball. Towards the end some useful hitting from Umang took the team past the 80 run mark. Siddharth Mehra was the pick of the bowlers with 2 wickets for just 10 runs in 3 overs.
Knight Walkers also did not start their chase well and lost two quick wickets early on. Partha played steadily for a while before deciding to go after the bowling. He hit Wasim for 3 consecutive sixes and and a four in an over. That brought down the asking rate down to under 6 an over. Knight Walkers, instead of playing cautiously, kept on going after the bowling and lost wickets in a hurry. Royal Starks' fielding stood out as some difficult catchers were held onto. The biggest turning point of the match came when Sreekant held on to a blinder that left everyone awestruck to dismiss Partha. Then wickets kept falling and despite a valiant effort from Kaustubh, Knight Walkers fell short by a margin of 12 runs.
The match that was a closely fought one and worthy of a final. It was an apt conclusion of a closely contested tournament.
Brief Scores
Royal Starks: 81 all out in 12 overs (Ranjeet 26, Umang 17*, Siddharth 2-10, Nithin 2-23)
Knight Walkers: 69 all out in 8.4 overs (Partha 26, Kaustubh 15, Jatin 3-21, Animesh 1-12)
Top Individual Performers
• Akshay Jayaprakasan (207 runs) was the highest run-getter in the tournament followed by Arjun Kemmu (157 runs)
• Siddharth Mehra and Jatin Choudhary finished as the joint highest wicket takers with 14 wickets each.
• Jatin Choudhary (132 runs and 14 wickets) and Partha P Chowdhury (152 runs and 9 wickets) were the best all-rounders of the tournament
We will be back with another edition of KCL in a year and we hope to see same level of enthusiasm, support and involvement from the student community.
