-By our special correspondent, Anurag Jain
NJIT won the toss and batted first and Mofeez and Rahul Motasha started bowling well, and Mofeez
in particular very tough to handle for NJIT guys. He got the fist breakthru when Ronak was caught in
gully by Rahul Motasha for duck. Pranav and Vicky had nice partnership going when out star Bowler
Rahul Shah bowled Pranav with a great swing ball. Opener Vicky who had scored 110 for NJIT in
their semifinal game against Rutgers and Chirag were going well, when Anurag in 15th over applied the
brakes and got Chirag and new bat Himanshu (for duck) bowling a maiden 2 wicket over. There were
many legitimate LBW appeals turned down especially against Rahul S.
Anurag further slowed the progress by cleaning up Sardesh with a perfect yorker. Vicky was still holding
the innings steady but Mofeez coming back for second spell bowled a snorter that Vicky could only manange
to pop to keeper and Rahul S. got another wicket (Keyur was bowled) It was a really hot and humid day to
play, with the astro turf of ground causing even more heat to generate. Ball was getting old and not
doing much and every fielder getting tired when NJIT took advantage and had 86 run partnership for
8th wicket. Amit Zaveri ended up making 76 not out with 11 fours and 1 six. Only Mofeez was
economical bowler andeverybody got treatment late. Rahul Motsha was able to break the partnership
in 34th over. Still we achieved our goal of restricting NJIT below 250 (243/8), a target we thought we
could easily achieve with the best batting line up assembled for RPI in 5 years. And we were not
proven wrong. Rahul Motasha even though playing with a slight injury dispatched their bowling to all
parts and made 50(37) with 9 fours before being bowled to a ball that spun in slightly. Sairam (13 off
23 balls) just played anchorman but he had gotten out first trying to clear longoff. Then Mofeez and
Zohair had partnership of 82 before Zohair got out to only possible way: Run Out. NJIT thought they
were back in game: no way. Satya played beautifully making 37 off 23 and Mofeez got stronger and
stronger and ended up with 62 not out. We won with 4.2 overs to spare. Unfortunately for NJIT,
opening bowler (Pranav) got hurt badly in first over itself and could not bowl again but still their
bowling and fielding was ordinary to our great batting.
Man of the match for final: Mofeez (62 n. o. off 58 balls and great spell of 7-0-29-2)
Man of the match for semifinal: Mohammed (95 n.o. and 2 wickets)
Best batsman for series: Zohair: 290 runs at avg. of 72.5
Best bowler of series: Rahul Shah: 14 wickets at avg. of 12.00
Man of the series: Rahul Shah for his 14 wickets and crucial innings of 42 in semifinal in which he had
partnership of 125 runs for 9th wicket with Mohammed. He finished with batting average of 60.00.
Other notable performances: Rahul Motasha (captain) with 110 runs and 8 wickets and yours faithfully
Anurag with 58 runs and 10 wickets. Rahul Shah, Rahul Motasha and Anurag got 32 out of 42
wickets taken by RPI in the tournament.
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