MARGAO: Gomanchal Warriors beat Desserts N’More Avengers by 19 runs to clinch the Goa Veteran Cricket League – 2 title at MCC Ground here on Sunday.
The final witnessed a low-scoring encounter with Desserts N’More Avengers opting to field first. Bowling out Gomanchal Warriors on 124 in 19.2 overs would have been relatively satisfying for the Avengers, yet they crashed to 105 all out in 17 overs and Gomanchal went on to win the title clash. The champions were awarded Rs 2 Lakh while the runners-up received Rs 1 Lakh.
Anup Kudchadkar was the chief guest and presented the trophies in the presence of Vinod Phadke, Pravin Blagon and Nitin Chopdekar.
Prasad Patil was named Man of the Match. Shishir Divkar and Mrunmay Das bagged the Best Batsman and Best Bowler award respectively.
Key contributions from Krishna Volvoikar (31), Prasad Patil (22 not out), Suraj Sawal (20) and Satyen Belekar (17), saw to it that Gomanchal Warriors went beyond the psychological 120-run mark. A 48-run partnership for the 6th wicket between Prasad and Suraj, was Gomanchal’s best stand after Krishna and Satyen had put on 43 runs for the second wicket.
On the bowling front, Desserts N’More Avengers’ Naresh Parsekar took 3 wickets; while Sagar Gosavi, Vinod Wilson, Ayub Khan, Tushar Sawant and Rajdeep Dhadhem picked up one wicket each.
Desserts N’More Avengers got off to a disastrous start but the third-wicket partnership of 54 runs between Shishir Divkar (52 off 34 balls) and Vikas Dessai (13) brought the Avengers back in the contest. However, their innings went back into a crisis after the dismissal of Vikas as the subsequent batters arrived and departed without even getting a double-digit score even as Shishir fought singlehandedly, hitting five boundaries and three sixes. Gomanchal’s Lokesh Sharma was the wrecker-in-chief with fantastic figures of 4-2-13-4. Prasad Patil took 3 wickets while Sameer and Zaheer Sadekar claimed one wicket each.
