Asked to make 117 for a win against probably the best of zonal teams,on the hottest day of the Cricinfo Rani Jhansi tournament Central Zonecould not hold the nerve and so lost to West Zone, giving the secondone run win match of the day
Ganesh Virudhagiri08-Apr-2000Asked to make 117 for a win against probably the best of zonal teams,on the hottest day of the Cricinfo Rani Jhansi tournament Central Zonecould not hold the nerve and so lost to West Zone, giving the secondone run win match of the day.U Kalyani won the toss for West Zone in their last match of theCricInfo Rani Jhansi tournament at the SRMC grounds and decided to batagainst Central Zone on a wicket that had a lot of cracks. West Zonewomen were not looking very enthusiastic after their close loss to AirIndia yesterday.West Zone openers, Amrutha Shinde and Triptimani Rocue added 57 in thefirst 15 overs until the latter played a poor shot at Rahul Singh onlyto lose her off stump. Amrutha along with Kalyani manouvred the spinof Rahul Singh and Varsha Raphal sensibly and took the score to 77when the skipper ran herself out for 17. The consistent Amrutha alsofollowed her captain giving an easy catch to Bindeshwari at deepsquare leg after making a well played 40.Once these two players were back in the pavilion, a slide wasexpected. But Aarti Vaidya, capitalising on a dropped chance by VarshaRaphal of Bindeshwari, kept one end tight and helped her team to crossthe three figure mark. Aarti perished in the 47th over trying to stepon the accelerator.Off spinner Bindeshwari Goyal extracted good turn and bounce from thewicket and packed up the West Zone tail. She ended up with theexcellent figures of 5 for 16. West Zone slumped to 116 all out in 47overs from 116 for 6 at the start of the over. Bindeshwari took threewickets in that over and the other was a run out.Central Zone started well with openers Bharti Verma and Seema Sinhaadding 26 in 10 overs before Kalyani struck twice in successive oversto get rid of Seema and Arundhati Kirkire who has been in good formwith the bat in this tournament. But Arundathi was unhappy with thedecision and took a long and slow walk back to the dressing room.When Chitra Bajpai and Bharti Verma were slowly steadying the CentralZone innings, Sangeetha Kamat was brought on to bowl and she did thetrick for West Zone by uprooting Bharti’s stumps. Preethi Dudhe joinedChitra and looked good until she was well caught by Sangeetha Kamat ofher own bowling.Ranjana Gupta gave Chitra good company and at this stage the matchlooked like Central’s. But a misunderstanding between the twobatswoman had Chitra walking back to the pavilion after a responsibleknock of 21. Rahul Singh came in and hit the ball hard, though shecould not send it to past the ropes due to the heavy outfield. Ranjanaand Rahul fell off successive deliveries, sent down by differentbowlers.The tail enders batted with a sense of responsibility and took thescore to 114 for 8 at the end of the 47th over. At this stage Kalyanicalled Aarti Vaidya to bowl her first over of the tournament and shedid the job for her skipper by giving away a run and then dismissingVarsha Raphal with an ultra flighted delivery.With the score 115 for 9, Central Zone needed two runs from two overswith the last pair on the crease. Nilima Waghmare was continuing hersecond spell and was bowling tight. Nilima was making amends for herpoor first spell which cost 14 runs in just three overs. Trying toretain the strike for the next over to score the winning run,Bindeshwari called Varsha (running for Neetu Singh who had pulled athigh muscle while bowling) for a single, pushing the ball tocover. Amrutha Shinde picked up and effected a direct hit at thestriker’s end to finish a clean sweep of the zonal teams by West Zone.For nearly three quarters of the match umpire Vijayaraghavan was offthe field due to sickness and he almost fainted due to the heat. Astand bye person officiated the match.