Team West Thrashes Team Blue in USAC 2024 Thanks to Brilliant Bowling Performance by Jain and Paradkar

West’s openers managed to achieve the meager target of 90 within 15 overs; Blue lost their second consecutive match in the tournament

Vedant Jain, player of the match, taking the wicket of Blue’s skipper / Rifat Malik.

By Rifat Malik and Haider Abbas

The USAC 2024 - Men's National Championship is underway in California and there were some pretty exciting matches on day two of the tournament. In the first game of the day, Team West was up against Team Blue. Team West won their first match of the tournament against East by a mammoth 91 runs and were rooting to keep their momentum. Meanwhile, Blue lost their match to Mid Atlantic by 60 runs and were hoping to register their first win of the tournament.

Toss and Teams

West’s skipper won the toss and decided to bowl first. Both sides were unchanged from their previous matches.

Blue Playing XI: Abhinav Sikharam, Adnesh Tondale, Anirudh Immanuel, Anish Deshpande, Manav Nayak, Nimish Bachu, Rayaan Bhagani, Rishab Mohan, Sanjay Stanley*, Sohan Bhat, Sujith Gowda

West Playing XI: Abheyender Singh, Abhishek Paradkar, Ayan Desai, Rahul Jariwala* †, Sanjay Krishnamurthi, Shadley Van Schalkwyk, Skanda Rohit Sharma, Umang Parikh, Vatsal Vaghela, Vedant Jain, Zahid Zakhil.

Early wickets set the momentum for the West bowlers, East bowled out cheaply

The West bowling lineup was right on the money from the very beginning, taking the wickets at regular intervals. They didn’t give much space to Blue’s batters, who had no answers to the brilliant bowling performance on display. Abhinav Sikharam and Sujith Gowda came on to open the Blue innings but were sent back to the pavilion with just 13 runs on the board. None of the batters could stay on the pitch as eight of the batters failed to reach the double figures. Only the skipper Sanjay Stanley displayed a bit of resistance, scoring 25 runs. They were bowled out for just 89 runs, with Vedant Jain taking four important wickets.

Openers finished the business for the West

Openers Rahul Jariwala and Zahid Zakhil were on song for the West as both took the Blue Bowlers to the cleaners. Zakhil was promoted up the order, after coming out to bat at no 6 in their opening match. It seemed a different pitch for the West openers as they played with ease and confidence. The pitch wasn’t supporting the Bloe bowlers and the ball wasn’t moving at all. Zakhil completed a fantastic half-century, scoring the winning runs for his side. His knock ensured they reached the target with more than 30 overs to spare.

Player of the Match

Vedant Jain was chosen as the Player of the Match for his brilliant bowling figures of 4/23 in 5.3 overs.