Tuti Patriots beat Chepauk Super Gillies; crowned TNPL champions

Albert Tuti Patriots were crowned champions of the inaugural Tamil Nadu Premier League when they beat Chepauk Super Gillies by a whopping 122 runs in a dominating final at the M A Chidambaram Stadium here on Sunday.

The league came a full circle as the teams that played the first match played the last match too and the result, too, was the same with Tuti Patriots emerging supreme.

Things went completely wrong for Rajagopal Sathish’s men from the start as the skipper was on the wrong side of the coin. Dinesh Karthik didn’t have any qualms in batting first and Gillies woes started.

Chepauk Super Gillies were sent on a leather hunt from the word go as Tuti openers Abhinav Mukund (82* off 52 balls) and Kaushik Gandhi (59 off 43 balls) made merry. Dinesh Karthik added a boisterous finishing touch scoring a quick-fire 55 in 26 balls to propel Patriots to 215/2 in 20 overs.

Chasing 216, Patriots spinner M Ganesh Moorthi (4/11) then sealed the match in the first over with a hat-trick when he sent X Thalaivan Sargunam, K H Gopinath, Sathish and Sasidev in the space of six balls, with the last three in as many balls. Chepauk Super Gillies could only manage 93 in 18.5 overs. Moorthi was named the man-of-the-match.

The match went into the record books for the highest team score (215), highest opening partnership at Chepauk (132), most wickets in an over (4) and the lowest team total (93).

The slide started when Thalaivan came down the track off the second ball only to loft the ball over wide mid-off for Anand Subramaniam to take a sensational catch running backwards. Gopinath was the next to go when he cut the ball straight to the point fielder while Sathish misjudged the spin to be caught out plumb in front of the next ball. Sasidev couldn’t prevent the hat-trick when he got an outside edge for L Balaji to take a neat catch at first slip.

S Vasanth Saravanan and Yo Mahesh tried to resurrect the innings with a 33-run partnership for the fifth wicket but Chepauk never recovered from Moorthi’s blows.

Balaji removed Yo Mahesh as a steady drizzle forced the players indoors for a brief while. Aushik Srinivas took a neat low catch at mid-off to send J Gowjith Subash (8) back and once Saravanan’s timber was rocked by Balaji for 30, the curtains came down on Chepauk Super Gillies.

A steady drizzle only delayed the inevitable for a few minutes as Gillies were bundled out for 93 in the 19th over.

Earlier, Mukund, who started from where left off in the first semi-final at Tirunelveli, made his intent clear when he took Ashwath Mukundhan to the cleaners in the bowler’s second over scoring 18 runs.

Gandhi, who started off playing the perfect second fiddle, started accelerating as Patriots found the boundaries with ease. A rollicking drive in the extra cover region off Mahesh set things up for the right-hander as he got into the groove easily.

At the half-way stage, Patriots were looking for a huge score by scoring at more than nine runs an over. The openers got to their half-centuries soon after and Mukund started to cut loose. He sent left-arm spinners R Alexander and R Sai Kishore out of the park in consecutive overs as Cheapuk Super Gillies ran out of ideas to keep the Patriots batsmen quiet.

Kishore broke the 132-run partnership in the 14th over when Gandhi mistimed a sweep to square-leg where Saravanan took an easy catch.

The breakthrough brought more sorrow for Super Gillies as Dinesh Karthik joined Mukund and they went on a rampage by scoring 82 in 37 balls, with Karthik scoring 55 of them in 26 balls.

Karthik found the ropes with ease in a 360-degree fashion by picking up a boundary and a six almost every over as the Patriots crossed the 200-run mark at the end of the penultimate over.

Karthik was run out in the second last ball, leaving Mukund stranded short of another well-deserved century as Patriots ended at 215.