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.
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