da aposte e ganhe： Overnight rain at the Sri Ramachandra Medical College meant that adamp wicket delayed the start of play between East Zone and West Zonein the CricInfo Rani Jhansi women’s cricket tournament on Monday byalmost two hours
Anand Vasu02-Apr-2000Overnight rain at the Sri Ramachandra Medical College meant that adamp wicket delayed the start of play between East Zone and West Zonein the CricInfo Rani Jhansi women’s cricket tournament on Monday byalmost two hours. The wicket was one predominantly of clay and thatmeant that the time taken to dry up was longer than usual.The matchwas reduced to a 41 overs a side affair and as it turned out, a lowscoring game. West Zone were restricted to 124 off their allotedquota. However, East were bundled out for 55 by some disciplinedbowling by West Zone.While the umpires Gururajan and Sundar made inspection afterinspection, the players did some light warm up exercises.Play finally got underway at 11.30. Winning the toss, the East Zoneskipper Pratima Chakravarty elected to take the field.Opening the bowling for East Zone was medium pacer Zulan. For West,southpaw Arti Vaidya got off the mark off the very first ball, easinga ball on her pads through the on side. Her companion out in themiddle was Vaishali Landge.After a slow start, West Zone lost their first wicket in the 10th overwhen Arti walked across her stumps and played down the wrong line to astraight ball from first change bowler Babusha. Arti (7) was steady inher stint at the crease. Though the score was just 21, it was hardly arepresentation of the West Zone effort. The outfield was slow as aresult of the overnight rain and boundaries were hard to come by. Tocompound matters, the East Zone bowlers maintained a good line andlength.A period of slow batting followed, with Vaishali unable to get theball away into the gaps. She motored on to 19, off what seemed like aninordinate length of time that consumed 54 balls, and was run outattempting a single that was not on.Though she was slow in going, Vaishali managed to seal up oneend. After her dismissal, wickets started to fall at regularintervals. It was only the arrival of the captain, Kalyani Umarani atthe crease that brought some hope for the West Zone side. After morethan 20 overs had been bowled, Kalyani cracked the first boundary ofthe innings. Planting her front foot down the wicket, she swung theball cleanly through the on side.However, West Zone’s joy was short lived. Kalyani, playing down thewrong line, nicked off spinner Saswati Mukherjee to thewicketkeeper. The West Zone skipper had made 20 off 39 balls.Unfortunately for West Zone they lost wickets at an alarmingly quickrate. From 49/2 they slumped to 90 for 7.Opening bowler Jhulan Goswami was the most economical bowler,conceding just 13 runs off her six overs. However, it was Saswati wholooked the most penetrative of the bowlers. She picked up 3/31 off hernine overs, including the wicket of the West Zone captain.At the end of their innings, West Zone had 124/9 on the board.When West came out to defend their modest total, the captain KalyaniUmarani took matters into her own hands. Opening the bowling with hernippy medium pacers she tied up one end. In a move that was designedto surprise, she had off spinner Sonali Chandok partnering her.Sonali bowled a fine spell. Giving the ball copious amounts of flight,she teased the batswomen into making false shots. Unlucky not tostrike early she drew first blood in the 8th over. Following that upwith more crisp off spinners, Sonali made batting very difficult forthe East Zone team. As the overs progressed, they got increasinglybogged down and began to lose wickets at regular intervals. In no timeEast Zone were reduced to 28/6. After that there was very little anysingle batswoman could do. Saswati with 14 top scored. Hardly a healhysign for East Zone.West Zone’s victory was achieved by maintaining good composurethroughout the course of the game. Sonali Chandok ended with thesplendid figures of 9-3-9-2 and helped skittle out East Zone for just55 runs.West Zone captain Kalyani speaking to CricInfo at the end of the matchsaid “we (West Zone) have nothing to lose. We are going all out for awin. The West Zone team will do its best to put up a good show.”