Cricket-
Asian star playing 7th game of the Bangkok Cricket League season 2021 & beaten Kerla strikers convincingly by 7 wickets & confirming their spot in Bangkok Cricket League playoff with their 6th win.
In the game played on Sunday 27th at Pattana Sports Ground, Asian Star has registered a thumping win against last year’s league champion Kerla Strikers with the help of Dharmesh Mer’s not out 114 runs. The top scorer of the Bangkok cricket league, Dharmesh has scored the second century of this season – not out 114 in mere 47 balls. This is his fastest century & took only 42 balls, a record for Asian Star Cricket Club.
Kerla Striker, last years’ league champion has won the toss and elected to bat on a beautiful windy afternoon, perfect condition for batting. However, good opening bowling by Asian star’s Pushpinder & Imran Cheema has kept Kerla opening pair, especially Rajesh Nair in check. Vishnu (14 runs in 20 balls) was first to depart caught brilliantly by Hardik Rathod on the bowling of Imran Cheema. Then Sree came to crease & joined Rajeesh to steer the innings with stroke 44 in 37 Ball before falling to the usual trap set on long on for him. He played straight in hands of Waseem Raza on the bowling of Dharmesh Mer. Hard-hitting batsman, Rajeesh couldn’t find his usual timing before being caught on boundary in hands of Imran Cheema on the bowling of Laxman Singh. He made 21 in 30 balls. Middle-order of Kerla tried to steady the ship but couldn’t score freely against good spin bowling by Hardik & Laxman Singh and eventually ended the innings 156 for 9 wickets in allotted 25 overs.
Imran has ended with the best bowling figures from ASCC, taking 4 wickets for 22 runs in his 5 overs.
Against the powerful batting line of Asian Star, Keral’s 156 was not a challenging total. Waseem Raza and Dharmesh Mer opened the innings of Asian Star chasing 157. Asif has given vital breakthrough in the very first over to Kerla Strikers taking the wicket of Wassem Raza (Sam). This bought Ajay Bijwe on the crease & as the partnership started building, Rajeesh has given another breakthrough to Kerla reducing ASCC to 41 for two & Pushpinder Singh, Captain of ASCC has also failed to spin bowling of Jijmon when ASCC has a score of 74 and still 84 to win. This gave some glimmer of hope to Kerla bowlers but Dharmesh has different plans for them. From here Dharmesh took the control of the innings and started hammering Kerla bowlers all around the park. Such devastation of his hammering that he scored all the 61 runs of the partnership from 74 to 135 in mere 24 balls
Eventually, Asian Star surpassed the target of 156 runs in mere 13.5 overs with Dharmesh remaining not out on 114 (42B with 7 towering sixes and 14 boundaries to the fence) and Dipak (Bobby) remain not out of 21 in 10 balls with 2 four and 2 sixes
Asian Star the last year’s runner up will be playing the remaining two games this weekend against Superboys & RBSC & if you are interested in watching the live games, please join us at Pattana Sports Resort on Saturday. ASCC is the premier cricket club in the Eastern Seaboard area & in case you are interested to join cricket or interested to know more about cricket activities around Pattaya, please contact asianstar2010@gmail.com Written by Asian Star Cricket Club, their thoughts and statements are their own.
