Albert TUTI Patriots beat Chepauk Super Gillies in the inaugural match of the Tamil Nadu Premier League by 45 runs at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. Chasing a challenging total of 165 to win, Gillies succumbed under pressure and managed to score 119.
The hosts were off to a good start, thanks to their opener KH Gopinath and Thalaivan Sargunam. But once the bowlers saw their back, things become easy for the visitors as the batting side were reduced to 63-6 in 10 overs from a commendable position of 62-2 after 8.4 overs.
Experienced campaigner L Balaji and Akash Sumra were the wreckers in chief as they dismissed the four batsmen, including the all-important wicket of Rajagopal Satish for a golden duck. Vasanth Saravanan and Anthony Dhas tried to get their innings back on track but lost their wickets against the run of play to hand the Patriots an easy win.
Sumra finished with figures of 3-14 in his four overs and was backed by Aushik Srinivas, who scalped three wickets conceding 23 runs while Balaji ended up taking 2 wickets for 26 runs. Thalaivan was the top scorer for the hosts with 29 off 22 balls.
Earlier in the match, the visitors put up a decent total of 164 on the board after electing to bat first. Their openers were off to a great start as both Kaushik Gandhi and Washington Sundar went after the bowlers right from the word go.
Gillies’ skipper Satish removed both the openers in quick time to apply brakes on the scoring rate. A lot was expected from Dinesh Karthick to fire in the inaugural match of the TNPL and that’s exactly what the skipper of TUTI Patriots did as he plundered the home bowlers to all parts of the ground and became the first batsman to score a fifty in the TNPL.
Initially, Karthick took some time to keep the scorecard ticking and was supported by Maruthi Raghav and U Sushil, who scored a 16-ball 13 and 25 off 19 balls respectively. Once he got his eye in, Karthick had no mercy for the bowlers and went on to score an unbeaten 67 off 49 balls with the help of 3 fours ad 4 sixes.
Skipper R Satish starred for the hosts with the ball as he ended up with figures of 2-16 in four overs.
Before the match got underway, the inaugural edition of the TNPL got kick started with a colorful opening ceremony, which featured a cluster of Kollywood stars including R Madhavan, Andrea Jeremiah, Sai Dhanshika, Shriya Saran, Dhanush and singer Karthik.
Brief scores: Albert Tuti Patriots 164-5 in 20 overs ( Dinesh Karthik 67*, U Sushil 25, R Sathish 2-16) beat Chepauk Super Gillies 119 in 19.4 overs (Thalaivan Sargunam 29, Akash Sumra 3-14, Aushik Srinivas 3-23) by 45 runs.
Brand-new app in a brand-new avatar! Download CricRocket for fast cricket scores, rocket flicks, super notifications and much more! 🚀☄️
