Mangalore United bows out of KPL

20 September 2009

The rain somehow stayed away from the Gangotri Glades ground to allow Mysore Maharaajas to carry out their threat of recording a win in front of their vociferous home crowd on Saturday evening.

The 13-run victory, their third from six matches, leaves them with some hope of making it to the lastfour stage even as their opponents Mangalore United crashed out with their fifth loss from the full seven games.
Now, the Maharaajas have to pray for some other results to go their way and then, beat Provident Bangalore in their last league game in Bangalore on Monday.
It was local lad SP Manjunath who set the stage for his sides domination, his unbeaten 55 (32b, 3x4, 3x6) being just the tonic the Maharaajas needed. Manjunaths timely innings enabled the Mysore team post a very healthy 174 in the allotted 20 overs, a total that always seemed beyond Mangalore Uniteds reach, given their lacklustre display on the day.

The start to the Mysore essay, after their skipper C Raghu elected to bat, was disappointing, openers KB Pawan and HT Sudhir Rao falling cheaply. The next three batsmen all contributed though, handsomely at that, to put the innings back on track. It was Chethan William (42, 30b, 2x4, 2x6), who started the recovery act, helped along by Shoaib Manager, who started slowly but then played some very attractive strokes en route to his 42 (30b, 3x4, 3x6).

With both departing before the end of the 15th over, there was still some work to be done and in the tall Manjunath, the Maharaajas found their man. He hit clean and hard, picking the right deliveries to be hit and sparing no bowler.

Once he was done, Mangalore United seemed a deflated lot and with only Rohit Sabharwal (51, 41b, 6x4, 1x6) firing among the top-order , the Mysore Maharaajas took control of the situation. There were a few catches dropped but their bowlers, led by the impressive Aditya B Sagar, still proved too good. Also some of the catching lapses were made up for when eventual Man of the Match Manjunath pulled off a superb catch to end the innings of Vijay Chavan (30, 14b, 2x4, 3x6) just as he was taking the attack to the bowlers.

source times fo india