Indoor cricket final with a difference

Tuesday, Jan 14, 2014

Dubai: It was an indoor cricket tournament final with a difference. The finalists were both from the same company.

DBMSC Steel Group-1 defeated DBMSC-2 to emerge champions of the OSN Winter Indoor Cricket Tournament at the International Cricket Council in Dubai Sports City.

It is the first time that two sides from the same organisation had to battle for glory in the final of an indoor tournament and they produced a keen contest.

DBMSC-1, batting first, scored 51, a testing but by no means insurmountable score. But the pressure of chasing with the title on the line proved too much for DBMSC-2 as it could muster only 37 in response.

Player of the Grand Final was Kashif Nisar for DBMSC-1 as he took four wickets for minus eight runs to follow up his 13 runs with the bat.

The format for all matches in the OSN Winter Indoor Tournament saw each side face 12 overs per innings with batsmen batting in pairs for three overs each and five runs deducted every time a wicket fell.

After lifting the Cup, DBMSC-1 captain Saqib Nazir said: “We are thrilled to win this tournament as we are building a new team. We had a target of 60 [when we batted] but we revised that after six overs of our innings to 50, which was good enough with our bowling and fielding. We had three direct hits [for run-outs] and that was the difference between the teams.”

Captain of the losing finalist DBMSC-2 Amit Chaturvedi said: “We lost some crucial wickets and were 30 runs short and, when we were fielding, we conceded a lot of overthrows and extras. That was 10 to 12 runs lost and that cost us the match. It is totally our fault, we cannot blame anyone else for this defeat.”

In the semi-finals DBMSC-2 beat Transmed by 54 runs with player of the tournament Abdul Shaikh scoring 13 before taking three wickets for minus six runs, while DBMSC-1 overcame SkyBridge Freight Solutions by 63 runs. In the second semi-final DBMSC-1 did not lose a single wicket in scoring 85, while Kashif Nisar once again proved a key man, scoring 11 and taking three wickets for minus seven runs.

The OSN Winter Tournament is one of nine indoor tournaments scheduled during the course of a 12-month period at the ICC Academy.

By K.R. Nayar Chief Cricket Writer