Karaikudi Kaalai and Chepauk Super Gillies will lock horns against each other in the third India Cements TN Premier League match at NPR College Ground, Natham, Dindigul on Sunday.
Both the teams are coming off a loss in their opening game — Karaikudi against the VB Thiruvallur Veerans and Chepauk against the Albert Tuti Patriots.
Chepauk had a one-sided opener at the MA Chidambaram Stadium against the Patriots. The bowling did decently well, though. R Sathish led the bowling attack beautifully, picking up two wickets with an economy of four.
Antony Dhas was the other bowler who impressed in the opening night, but the Chepauk batting performance couldn’t compliment their bowling.
Apart from Thalaivan Sargunam who scored 29, the other batsmen couldn’t get going and struggled against the left-arm spin of Aushik Srinivas and medium pacer Akash Sumra. Chepauk lost as many as four wickets in the gap of one run, with three batsmen getting out for nought.
They would look to put up a better batting performance against Karaikudi and hope to get off the mark.
On the other hand, the Karaikudi team looked set after a good start when they dismissed the Veerans opener Hari Nishanth with no score on board and picking two quick wickets thereafter.
But Baba Aparajith’s magnificent century took the game away from them. Karaikudi could not get going in the middle overs against spin and if not for the acceleration at the end by R Rajkumar, they might have not had many runs to defend.
R Srinivasan, who scored a half-century and Vijay Kumar were positives in the batting department, apart from Rajkumar.
Suresh Babu bowled an impressive spell, though wicketless, Mohan Prasath was successful in restricting the Veerans as well. The side will be hoping for experienced campaigners like Subramanium Badrinath, their captain and the aggressive Anirudha Srikkanth to step in to push for a win.
Key battle: Anirudha Srikkanth against the opponent’s skipper, Sathish would be a battle to watch out for. Sathish is coming off from an impressive bowling performance in the first match, while Anirudha looked to score quick singles.
It would be engaging to see how Anirudha manages to score aggressively against Sathish’s medium pacers, given that the Chepauk skipper opened the match in his first game.
Both the teams would want to get going and open the account in tomorrow’s game lest it is too late for them.
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