Parthiv Patel – Emerging Players Tournament
India’s hopes of a title defense in the T20 leg of the Emerging Players Tournament suffered a huge blow as they lost at the final in Brisbane to Australian Institute of Sports (AIS). The young Aussies never put a foot wrong as scoring 162 for 5 in their stipulated twenty overs; they made sure that the young Indian Turks fell 29 runs short of target.
Electing to bat first the Australian Institute of Sports posted a challenging score of 162 in twenty overs, thanks to Moises Henrique’s unbeaten 72 off 41 balls aided by James Faulkner’s 33 ball 44. The AIS team suffered an initial setback as Indian pacer Vinay Kumar inflicted an early blow removing AIS opening batsman Ben Dunk cheaply in the third over. This early Indian attack was further strengthened by Jaidev Unadkat as he made Luke Pomersbach an easy prey as he fell for 5 in the very next over.
Nicolas Maddinson along with James Faulkner set up a recovery as they added 33 runs amongst them. But this dangerous pair in way of recovery was removed when Bengal pacer Asok Dinda removed Maddinson in the ninth over. After Maddinson’s cautious 25 ball 20, Henrique’s and Faulkner set things up for a good score as the duo added 72 runs on the board.
Chasing 163 to win both the openers Parthiv Patel (9) and Dhawan (6) returned to the dugout early. Even the middle order crumbled as Ajinkya Rahane (12) and Manish Pandey (11) fell early prey to the disciplined Aussie bowling. Even though Kedar Jadav and Pujara tried to push the stagnating run rate things didn’t turn out well for India and after 14 overs India were left tottering at 98 for 7.
Cheteshwar Pujara kept on waging a lone battle, but his personal score of 38 from 33 went in vain as he ran out of partners at the other end and India could manage 133 for nine wickets in their twenty overs. At the final at Brisbane AIS won the Emerging Players Tournament Final by 29 runs.
By: Soubhik Ray
Tags: AIS, Australian Institute of Sports, Cricket, Emerging Players Tournament, India
