The Gentlemen's Cup 2007

Singapore wins Saudara Cup after four years!!

When the sun was setting around Bandar Kinrara on May 20th Sunday evening, there was history being made by the young Singapore team. Under the cosh for most part of the day, the Singapore team led admirably by Chaminda Ruwan won the annual Singapore-Malaysia “Ashes” by a slender margin of 27 runs – the exact number of runs that they led their Northern neighbours after the first innings.

To term the victory as a miracle will belittle the efforts put in by the red caps.

To call the game ‘lost by Malaysia, more than won by Singapore’ will only be telling half the story.

To call it a ‘come from behind victory’ will be pedantic and

To call that cricket is a glorious game of uncertainties will be clichéd.

I would like to call this a victory of self-belief, a victory of never-say-die spirit, a victory of a quiet belief that I could sense in the team as I boarded the bus on that rainy afternoon on 17th May at Kallang.

For detailed daily reports, check the following links:

Day 1: When Munish ruled!

Day 2: Suresh and Stumpings!

Day 3: Dreamy Dharmi!

Saudara Light List

For the statistically minded, Singapore won the game by 27 runs exactly the number of runs it scored as the first innings lead.

But in my opinion, the margin did not matter. The victory did. The manner of victory did. In reality, this team should have steam-rolled the Malaysian team which was short on experience and talent as well. Nine out of ten times, this team would have done that exactly. But this year’s Saudara edition was the tenth one. In cricket, as in life, you do not get what you wish for. Under those circumstances, one has to gut it out in the middle, roll with the punches, grab half-chances, convert opportunities and most importantly, NEVER SAY DIE.

And they proposed that they would like to dedicate the victory to the two late Singapore cricketers who epitomised that spirit - Mr Sathivail and Mr Dennis Meyer.

Congratulations dear young warriors in Red Caps! You definitely deserve the kudos that you will be getting for this great victory. Ensure that you bask in that glory and ensure that that handsome trophy donated by the non-benders from both sides of the causeway for a princely sum of RM 33,000 in 1970, stays with us for years to come!

Saudara Cup: The Lighter List

Quote of the match:

OK boys! They don’t know how to do it! So let us do it!! Chaminda Ruwan, the Singapore skipper to his boys on that eventful third day evening, revealing his inclination towards things that are Nike!

Ball of the match:

Shoib Razak’s in-swinging yorker to Suresh Navaratnam which pretty much ended Malaysia’s hopes of a victory. A dream delivery from the Paki!

Catch of the match:

The gutsy Krishnamurthy has killed many a Singaporean hope both with the ball and the bat in the past. Even in this edition, he scored a crucial 30+ in the first innings. When he was promoted to follow Eszrafiq on the final day, there were obviously high hopes. All of them fizzled out, when Dharmichand Mulewa gobbled up a low, dying catch one-handed onto his right, of his own bowling. That was commitment.

Shot of the match:

Chris Janik was called the Matt Hayden of Singapore, by a learned gentleman from across the causeway. Even if one says that the comparison is too harsh on the youngster, his account-opening square sizzler on Day 2 against the Malaysian spearhead, Suresh was so good that even the bowler was supposed to have applauded the shot. Take a bow, Chris!

Fall of the match:

Umpire Sri Ganesh (me, me, me) avoided a Suresh-straight-drive Exocet missile off Buddhika by the best way possible. Lying low – no actually, it was diving low and staying there until the air was clear of explosives ;-)

Youngster of the match:

Malaysia’s wicket keeper Shafiq – hardly 17 and yet kept like a pro and promptly collected a record. He was enthusiastic to the core and kept goading his bowlers and fielders to perform better. His batting was a revelation at no. 9. Watch out for this chap in the future games!

Most expensive dive of the match:

With things on a balance, when runs were like gold, Munish Arora dived in covers to save a non-existent single. Last heard, MCA is planning to send an invoice to Munish towards levelling that particular area in the outfield!

Gentleman of the match:

Glenn Meyer – when he ‘walked’ after nicking a Krishnamurthy delivery in the second innings. Cricket is still a gentlemen’s game, folks!

Saudara 2007 - Final Day

If one could discern any smiles in the Singapore camp on the Sunday morning, it was on Shoib’s face – for he was the one who always said that Chelsea would win the FA cup finals the previous night. But one heard that almost none of the boys were interested in watching the game, as they had other more important and pressing things to consider and be concerned about at the happenings at Kirara Oval rather than the new Wembley stadium.

The game plan was simple for both the teams. For Malaysia, get the remaining wickets fast and furious; contain the target to less than 250 and then go for victory. For Singapore, occupy the crease; score runs at a reasonable clip; get the target to 275+ with enough time to bowl out Malaysia. As an onlooker, you could not have asked for more. And I am sure that draw was not in the minds of neither skipper.

It looked like Singapore’s plan would succeed after they had safely negotiated Suresh’s first spell in the morning. But then bad habits die hard. First it was Dharmichand, who decided to take on Shukri – Shukri bowled admirably in the second innings by keeping the batsmen honest, got deceived and gave Shafiq the third stumping of the game.

In walked first innings rear-guard man Arun to join Munish. Munish sensed that he would go for the kill and scored a six. And when he tried to repeat the stroke against the wily Shukri – you guessed it, he got stumped!!! Fourth stumping for young Shafiq in the same innings. Statisticians are going to have a field day. It was also his fifth dismissal of the innings and you could hear the boy jumping and pleading everyone to get him one dismissal to create a record of six in one innings.

Arun succumbed to the pressure of Eszrafiq; Shoib and Manoj puttered around for a while before Suresh returned to end the misery for Shoib by getting him to nick to in-cloud-nine-Shafiq.

Singapore ended with a disappointing 213, setting a target of 241 to Malaysia in a possible 77 overs. A shade over three runs an over. With no devils in the wicket except for the odd one turning slowly, you could guess which dressing room was happier at the innings-change.

For Singapore, the pre-lunch period of 40 minutes was crucial and they needed to take a wicket or two to put the pressure on Malaysia. But Rakesh and Suhan came back with different intentions and played sensible cricket through and through. Rakesh was the more aggressive of the two and when he slashes, he usually throws the kitchen sink at it. One such case was a hard chance to the first slip and there was another chance off a no-ball. The bowler to suffer on both occasions was Arun, who probably bowled the fastest spell by a bowler from either side in the match during that period. All said and done, Malaysia went into have a good lunch with all wickets intact and less than two hundred runs to win the game – don’t even count the overs remaining.

Post-lunch, Chaminda tried different combinations but to no avail. The two openers played sensible cricket much to the delight of the small but very vocal supporter group consisting of girls from Malaysian Air Force, ex-internationals, and other well-wishers. Each run was greeted with thunderous applause and each boundary was treated as if it was the winning shot. And you can imagine their happiness when the two crossed the century mark for the opening wicket. Finally after infinite permutations and combinations Chaminda got it right when he let Dharmi bowl from the road-end. Suhan Kumar who had batted so well in the first innings as well, played across to a straight one from Dharmi and was adjudged LBW to open the gates for Singapore.
The next batsman Suriaprakash followed soon after in identical fashion. From a strong 107/0, Malaysia had slipped to 109/2. With plenty of overs and strong batsmen to come in, it was still the hosts’ game to win or lose, but one could sense a flutter or two in the Malay camp.

The portly Eszrafiq started off aggressively and scored shots and runs at will all round the wicket. With the score at 170/2 and 30 overs remaining to score the 70-odd runs, Singapore should have ideally thrown in the towel. But that did not happen.

Shoib Razak, who was in the middle of an interesting and I should say, INSPIRING spell of reverse swing and plan, decided to start bowling a couple of feet outside the off-stump to Eszrafiq banking on the youngster’s aggression to yield a mistake. Yield it did and how the match turned on that moment!?!

After having pushed a few of those deliveries powerfully to the fielders in the off-side cordon, Eszrafiq chose to change the angle of his stroke to break the shackles. But the additional swing that got imparted on the old ball, made it move the additional inch or so. The resulting half-drive, half-edge flew to the point-gully region where Christopher Janik made no mistake and one could sense Singapore smelling blood. (170/3)

At the other end, Rakesh completed his well deserved century including that memorable six of a Chaminda bouncer, which went miles into the nets.

The new batsman was Krishnamurthy who has frustrated Singapore many a time with his timely cameos to snatch victory from defeats. Sunday was not to be one of those days; in the middle of a dream spell, Dharmi held one back and Krishna could only half check his drive and the resulting catch was smartly taken by the bowler one-handed and inches off the ground. (179/4)

Anuar, who did not field for the entire second innings came out and returned to the pavilion promptly. With no feet movement, he wafted at a Shoib-lolly-pop outside the off-stump and Chetan behind the stumps gobbled it up neatly. (181/5)

Still it was Malaysia’s game as there was the centurion Rakesh batting beautifully when Suresh Navaratnam, the first innings hero for Malaysia strode in.

Chetan behind the stumps was exhorting Shoib to get the new man first ball. One felt that it was more bluster and more hope than any real possibility. But what is life when hope does not get converted into a possibility? Shoib, who until then has been bowling two feet outside the off-stump and induced false shots from batsmen decided to come to the party big time.

The ball he chose to come in with was one of the rare beauties – an in-swinging yorker. Suresh failed to negotiate it completely and ended up getting clean bowled. And you could have heard Shoib’s roar in Kallang! (181/6)

Within a span of five balls, three wickets had fallen and now it was the Singapore contingent, consisting of a grand total of 17 people: 14 players, one coach, one manager and one trainer, which was the loudest.

Malaysia skipper Vishnu came in and played for a few overs. There was one sweet lofted drive off Shoib to settle some nerves. But with the score at 201 in the 59th over, he decided to have a go at Dharmi and promptly holed out to Arun Vijayan in the deep-mid-wicket region. The gasp of despair from the stands was understandable, as Vishnu along with Rakesh could have taken Malaysia to the victory easily. And what followed was even more disastrous. Three balls later, Rakesh who had lived by the sword, perished when he tried to force a cut through the slips by feathering a nick to the jubilant Chetan. (201/8) That gave Dharmi a well-deserved five-for against all odds.

A word about Dharmi’s bowling here; after an indifferent bowling effort by his high standards in the first innings, he came back strongly in the second innings. There was the flight, variation of lengths, the straighter ones, the loop, the aggression, the cunning. It was a pure delight to watch the master at work.

Darvin Muralitharan and Shafiq decided to play on. One has to remember that these two youngsters scored a combined 38 runs in the first innings with their clever placements and some audacious strokes. Shafiq proved that the first innings was no flash in the pan when he cover-drove Shoib for a boundary.

But it was not to be Malaysia’s day when in the first over of the last hour of play, Darvin played a good sweep off Dharmi, only to discover that he had dislodged the bails while completing the stroke. Hit wicket! (212/9)

Singapore sensing that history is there to be made, brought in Arun Vijayan to ‘express’ things out. Of the third ball of his innings, exactly at 17:34 pm on May 20th 2007, Arun trapped Malaysia no. 11 batsman Shukri LBW and the celebrations began right in earnest on the field itself.

The ebullient Singapore wicket-keeper Chetan Suryavanshi said later that he had shed tears only once on the cricket field before this day. And this victory definitely brought tears to not only his eyes but also to the other players and team officials of Singapore.

For the statistically minded, in the end, Singapore won the game by 27 runs exactly the number of runs it scored as the first innings lead.

Saudara 2007 - Day 2

Captaincy must be a hard job. I can’t say for sure because I have never captained a side. But when you have a reasonably big first innings score and then if the opposition gives you the reply in kind and if the wicket is its flat best, you don’t want to be the bowling side’s captain. But that was where Chaminda was at the end of Day 1.

But the second day morning opened well for Singapore. After a few pokes and strokes here and there, Malaysia committed a triplet of hara-kiris and found themselves staring down the barrel at 87/4. Arun struck twice in a couple of overs by cleaning up Suriya and the danger-man Eszrafiq. At the other end, Dharmi foxed the aggressive Rakesh by bowling him around the legs. From a relative safety at the beginning of the day, Malaysia stuttered into danger zone pretty fast and there was a sense of inevitability around the happenings at that time.

In walked Suresh Navaratnam and along with the limping Anuar, the duo built a rollicking stand of century-plus which was as much entertaining as it was educating. It was entertaining as Suresh and Anuar took the fight to the Singapore star spinner Dharmi by repeatedly carting him over the infield and sometimes out of the ground as well. It was educating, on how one could score runs at a fair clip without ugly slogging. Finally, when Suresh was plumbed by Shoib, Malaysia was in relative safety. Anuar soon followed by playing on and before long Malaysia was tottering at 244/8. But the diminutive keeper from Malaysia – Shafiq, played some audacious paddle sweeps, inside-out cover drives, and along with Darvin ensured that Malaysia ended up just 27 runs short of Singapore.

If Malaysia’s collective batting helped the cause including important contributions from the youngsters, for Singapore, the letdown was the overall lack of teeth in the bowling. The pacemen were plagued by no-balls, the spinners were not too tight and thankfully, there weren’t any important catches dropped!

Definitely, one could sense that the Malaysians were on the high, after almost matching Singapore blow-for-blow in the first outing.

The game plan for Singapore was pretty simple; put enough runs on the board utilizing the 46 overs remaining in Day #2. There were talks about when to declare and what the ideal score before declaration.

Trainer Swee Heng tells – or should I say, repeats ad nauseam, that sports is about repetition. You repeat good things, you perform well. You repeat bad things; you suffer. I don’t think that I am not as articulate as Swee Heng, but dear reader, you would have got the gist. Yes, the bad habits of the first innings repeated for Singapore. Chetan found mid-on with un-erring accuracy after spanking a straight drive that would have cut any limb on its way. Glenn did the gentleman by “walking” after edging a swinging beauty from Krishnamurthy. Sagar, once again flattered to deceive, leaving Singapore in familiar territory.

After some initial jitters against Suresh, Christopher and skipper Chaminda, they settled down nicely to stitch a useful partnership. Chaminda showed glimpses of his class, when he thrashed the danger-man Suresh repeatedly through the covers and hooked his bouncers to chase him out of the attack.

When Chaminda and Christopher were batting, it looked as if batting was the easiest job around. Apart from the single blemish of a dropped catch at point off Suresh, Christopher did enough justice to his talent and scored a brisk half-century. He probably played the shot-of-the match, when he square cut-drove Suresh for a boundary to open his account. The shot was pure poetry in that the ball sped over the lush-green carpet of Kinrara Oval with that sweet swishing sound. And I loved that fluorescent pink grip of his bat!

The introduction of spin from both sides, slowed down proceedings and just when it looked that the pair would bat through the day, the first of the many insanities happened. Two short of his chance-less half-century, Chaminda decided to rush down the wicket to dispatch rolly-polly Eszrafiq to Sri Lanka. But the youngster kept the ball wide and little Shafiq claimed his second dismissal of the innings by effecting the stumping in a flash.

Soon after, Christopher proved his loyalty to his skipper by getting dismissed in exactly the same manner. You might think that cold, flu and other ailments are contagious. But in reality even bad habits are contagious. Go no further than that dismissal for proof of this axiom. This brought the two left-handers: Buddhika Mendis and first-innings hero Munish Arora to the wicket. Munish was obviously nursing a bad back and Singapore was just 170 runs ahead with half the side back in the hut.

With about five overs to go for stumps, Eszrafiq drifted one into Buddhika and bent it away. The natural angle and the spin of the ball, kissed the outer edge of the tentative Buddhika bat en-route to first slip where skipper Rohan Vishnu accepted the catch gleefully.

The day ended tantalizingly balanced with a slight tilt towards Malaysia. Singapore was ahead by about 180+ runs with only four second innings wickets in hand.

Saudara 2007 - Day 1

After winning the toss, Singapore rightly chose to bat on a track that was expected to assist the seamers initially. You know what the great WG Grace said, “If you win the toss, think long and hard and elect to bat!” But Chaminda did not think long to make the decision and chose to make first use of the wicket.

Malaysia’s start was superb; Suresh Navaratnam, the Associate Nations’ Michael Holding, got Chetan Suryavanshi for a duck – about two hundred runs less than what he hoped to score for!

What followed was a crazy second over from Anuar; he sprayed the ball like the proverbial lawn sprinkler and gave away 28 runs in the second over and suddenly from 3/1, Singapore’s score jumped to a respectable 31/1!!

But that proved to be a false hope and soon Suresh cleaned up both Glenn Meyer and Chaminda to some real beauties and before long, Sagar Kulkarni followed his skipper after showing glimpses of what he could do.

A little bit of digression is worth here: Before the match, Singapore’s coach Venkataramana mentioned that the only thing that he fears is the complacency from his star-studded team. It would not have been surprising if Venkat was tearing his head apart on seeing some of the strokes paid by his stars.

To cut the long story short, suffice it to say that coupled by some very accurate and intelligent bowling by Suresh Navaratnam and Krishnamurthy, Singapore slipped from trouble to deep trouble and soon found itself in a real deep hole at 134/7 – and the Malaysians had hardly broken into a sweat. Munish Arora who came in at the fall of the third wicket (Chaminda) was holding his end up – he promised that on his way into KL! Arun Vijayan who walked in after Dharmi decided to take an early shower, showed his illustrious predecessors what they failed to do on a wicket that was as flat as a pancake. Oh! I love these clichés!

Slowly the two built on what was in effect the match-winning partnership of 130+ runs.
Munish Arora, who has played under Saurav Ganguly during his stints in rossgolla-land, showed that he is no slouch in off-side strokes when compared to the Prince of Calcutta. Some of the off-side strokes reduced the fielders to be mere spectators and slowly but surely, the partnership got constructed run by run. Fighting a suspect-back, inhibiting heat and humidity and an unrelenting Malaysian attack, Munish guided Arun and the Singapore team to relative safety.

Arun’s batting was a revelation. He started out with a couple of slog sweeps and then settled to some sensible batting. After he got his first half-century in Saudara Cup – and second for Singapore – he played a delightful reverse-sweep which brought oohs and aahs from the few onlookers! But that stroke proved to be his downfall as well.

In the mean time, Munish showed the spectators why he is the “Steve Waugh” for Singapore by scoring a century which is definitely worth the weight in gold. May be his own weight J
With some last minute calculated slog, Singapore ended their quota of 75 overs at 304/8 – believe me, they would have been satisfied with 200! Come to think of it, Munish’s suspect back was the backbone of the Singapore innings and no pun intended!

I think the coach was right; Singapore was complacent; each batsman thinking that the next man would do the job. The young Malaysian team spearheaded by the experienced Suresh Navaratnam almost made the Singapore faces as red as their caps – but, a big but, for the superb innings by the man from Punjab. If only they had held their catches…well, if only pigs could fly…

Malaysia 1st Innings:

Satu! Satu! That was the mantra of the Malaysia innings. The experienced Rakesh Madhavan and the man-of-the-match of Carl Schubert Trophy 2006, Suhan Kumar started their innings sedately. With a judicious mixture of aggressive running between the wickets and attacking strokes and tight defence, they built the partnership to a worrying proportion for the Singapore team.

Chaminda tried various combinations. He tried Arun, Shoib, Dharmi, Jackie, Buddhika; brought himself on. All to no avail. His plan was simple; he wanted the batsmen not to get settled against any of his bowlers; but what really happened was that the bowlers were not settling down to any line or length or batsman!

After whacking Dharmi for a good sixer to the cow’s corner, Suhan gave the break-through that the Temasek boys wanted by playing a bit too early and gave a relieved-Chaminda a catch at mid-wicket. Still Malaysia ended the day under relative safety after having lost only one wicket in reply to the strong score from Singapore.