Merciful Conquerors v Victorious Royals

The first fixture of the week at Cheam CC was played between the Royals and Conquerors who have both had their share of mixed results. An important toss to win in the heatwave, the Conquerors elected to bat first.

Safwan was back to his punishing ways by blitzing the ball to all corners, supported well by Farhan for an opening stand of 68 off 33 balls. Safwan went ahead and registered another 50 (53 off 25). The fall off Safwan’s wicket at 72-2 opened the gate for the Royals to make inroads as the MC were struggling at 88-4 at the midway stage. Muhammad Taha was causing the damage for the bowling side with good figures of 3-19 in his spell. A display of excellent resilience and counter attacking by captain Faizan (48 off 28) and Fareed (32* off 24) with the bat amidst pressure producing an 85 run partnership that saw the MC out of danger and posting a solid total of 173-5. This was going to require some very good batting by the Royals to chase!

The Conquerors were on the money with the ball as well not giving much away as both opening batters for the Royals couldn’t cause much damage before departing with the score at 19-2 in 19 balls. Veteran Abid Ahmed was finding his groove with the bat playing a delightful knock of 34 off 20 (170 sr), but he couldn’t find any partner to support him and build the partnership that would challenge the total and the run rate. Mudassar Dogar in particular was the destroyer with the ball for the MC picking up 3 top order wickets for his side and later a 4th wicket (4-27) of Taha, who had quite an impressive outing with the bat as well having scored a thumping 41 off 21 balls! Eventually, the Royals fell 29 runs short of the total.

A good win for the MC who record their 2nd win out of 3 games, whereas the Royals have now lost 2 in a row having won their first match of the season.