Panaji: Desserts N’More Avengers and Manas Mavericks opened their campaign at the 3rd Panjim Gymkhana Members League T20 tournament with victories at Panjim Gymkhana ground here on Sunday.
Desserts N’More Avengers, who are the new-entrants in the PGML, beat Baale Tigers by four wickets in the first match today. Put into bat, Baale Tigers were all out for 123 runs in 19.3 overs. Desserts N’More Avengers chased down the target, reaching 125/6 in 17.2 overs.
Sameer Chodankar (5/10) was the hero for Desserts N’More Avengers with his spin bamboozling the Baale Tigers batsmen and disrupting the course of their innings from 97/3 in 14 overs to being restricted to just around run-a-ball total. Sameer was also in a good nick with the bat, scoring 25 runs of 16 balls, and was adjudged man of the match.
Harsh Jethaji (29 not out) and captain-cum-team owner Sagar Salgaocar (27) played an important role with the bat as Desserts N’More Avengers made an impressive start to their PGML journey.
In the second match of the day, Manas Mavericks put on a confident batting display after winning the toss against Priority Titans. Having posted a challenging total of 170/9, Manas Mavericks kept pegging back Priority Titans, who threatened at times to take the challenge to their rivals before being restricted to 156/6.
Abhijit Bhandari played a key role in the victory for Manas Mavericks as he first struck a strokeful 38 runs off 17 balls (6×4, 1×6); and then came good with the ball (3/22) picking the wickets of Pranav Dhuri (31), Priority Titans skipper Mukhtar Kadri (14) and big-hitter Nilesh Naik (22). Abhijit was named man of the match. Earlier, Robin D’Souza (36) and captain Ilyas Naroo (35) played out fluent knocks to set Manas Mavericks on the road to a big total.
Om Fadte was once again a top-scorer for Priority Titans with a good-looking knock of 36 runs, which had four boundaries in it. However, Priority Titans slumped to their second successive loss in the PGML3.0. On Saturday, they had gone down to RC Goa by 20 runs.
At the end of the first weekend – Dempo Challengers, RC Goa, Desserts N’More Avengers and Manas Mavericks, all have a victory against their names.
Sameer Chodankar of Desserts N’More Avengers receives the Man of the match award from Aakash Khaunte in the presence of Suresh Mahadevan.
Abhijit Bhandari of Manas Mavericks receives the Man of the match award from Mayuresh Dhume in the presence of Girish Parekh.
