dindugal
The evening belonged to captain R Sathish who scored a quickfire 46 and Anthony Dhas who came up an excellent all-round display.
Electing to bat first, KH Gopinath and Thaiavan Sargunam gave Gillies a good start, taking 19 runs in the third over bowled by Santha Moorthy.
Sargunam looked in good nick as he was not afraid to come down the track and whack the ball into the crowd. But he failed to read an arm-ball from Mohan Prasad and was bowled while playing across the line.
The Chepauk batsmen were determined to go for the kill and every bad delivery was treated with disdain. A change of ends from Moorthy did no good as the Chepauk batsmen hit 22 runs in the sixth over to end the power-play at 67/1.
Kaalai heaved a sigh of relief when the scoring rate dropped a bit after the powerplay. Vasanth Saravanan got out going for a big shot but Gopinath kept the scoreboard busy. He took on Suresh Babu for 18 runs in the 10th over when CSG reached 94.
The good work by Gopinath (43 off 26 balls) ended when he tried to play across the line to the spinner M. Shahjahan and was trapped in-front.
Just when it looked like the batting would come a cropper again, U. Sasidev and skipper Sathish made merry. The duo added 50 off 27 balls for the fifth wicket.
CSG lost three wickets off the last three balls (team hat-trick) of the game to finish at 195/9 , scoring 101 runs in the last 10.
Karaikudi scored at a brisk rate in the first five overs with Vijay Kumar displaying a stupendous show with the bat. He took 23 runs off Yo Mahesh’s first over as Karaikudi scored 69 runs in the first six overs. But the pressure of a huge target did them in. R Alexander sizzled with the ball as he spun a web around the batsmen and strangulated them with no room. He returned figures of 3/28 in four overs.
Later, Dhas wreaked havoc with the ball as he took four wickets for nine runs in an excellent display of seam bowling. Only Vijay Kumar (46) and R. Srinivasan (38) managed double figures for Karaikudi.
Brief scores: Chepauk Super Gillies 1959 in 20 overs (Sathish 46, KH Gopinath 43) Karaikudi 128 in 17.1 overs.(Vijay Kumar 46, Alexander 3-28, Anthony Dhas 4-9).
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