Chepauk Super Gillies off to a flying start

Veerans, which elected to bat, ran into trouble early thanks to intelligent bowling by rival captain R Sathish, who bagged three wickets for 17 runs from his four overs. The final total of 126 for seven that it put up was by no means good enough to test the Chennai team. KH Gopinath struck an unbeaten 54 as Super Gillies reached its target in 18.3 overs. 

Though it lost Thalaivan Sargunam early in its chase, Super Gillies kept its cool with a solid 74-run second-wicket stand between KH Gopinath (54 not out) and S Karthik (42 off 35 balls) virtually sealed the fate of Thiruvallur Veerans. 

Captain R Sathish gave Chepauk Super Gillies a flying start when he broke the back of the Veerans batting. First, he dismissed opener Hari Nishanth diving to his left for a caught and bowled. He then got rid of his counterpart B Aparajith, whose half-hearted flick resulted in a catch for wicket-keeper down the leg-side. 

When NS Chaturved, who seemed to be in an aggressive frame of mind slamming 35 off 22 balls, hit a good length ball that got up a little bit back to the bowler Sathish had Veerans in a spot. There was further trouble for Veerans when Sidharth Siva was run out after a smart throw from point by Thalaivan straight into Karthik’s gloves. From 55 for five, Malolan Rangarajan and R Rajan took the score to 91 before left-arm spinner Sai Kishore struck twice. 

Rajan was caught by Sasidev, who also took an easy catch off an attempted reverse sweep by Malolan (27). That was virtually the end of the Veerans fight. Abhishek (25) hit a couple of sixes towards the end to help Veerans go past 120. 

BRIEF SCORES: VB Thiruvallur Veerans 126/7 in 20 overs (NS Chaturved 35, Malolan 27, R Sathish 3/17, Sai Kishore 2/16) lost to Chepauk Super Gillies 129/4 in 18.3 overs (Gopinath 54 not out, Karthik 42).