PANAJI
LPK11 and Dempo Challengers won their respective matches of the ongoing Panjim Gymkhana Members League (PGML) at Panjim Gymkhana ground, Campal, on Sunday.
LPK11 scored a thrilling 3-wicket victory over Baale Tigers in the evening while Dempo Challengers had registered a winning start to their campaign with a 32-run win against Prescon Panthers, a press release from the organisers said.
LPK 11 bounced back after opening day's loss, in a thrilling fashion as they beat Baale Tigers by 3 wickets on the second day of the league. Electing to bat, Baale Tigers posted 160/7; Shushrut Nasnodkar (32), Sairaj Dhond (32), Govind Gawas (16) being the key run-getters. LPK 11, who had lost to Prescon Panthers in the inaugural match on Saturday, chased down the challenging target with crucial knocks from Siddharth Ghanekar (37), Manish Kakode (35), Vinay Palekar (18), Sanjay Netravalkar (14) and Man of the match Anish Kakode (13 not out).
Anish, who had earlier picked three wickets giving away 18 runs in his three overs, had the task of finishing the match after a well-set Siddharth had to go back to the dressing room on reaching 35 adhering to the tournament rules.
Earlier, Kiran Shirwaikar's man-of-the match display, powered Dempo Challengers to a 32-run victory over Prescon Panthers in the first match of the day.
Shirwaikar came up with an important late-order inning of 14-ball 25 that took Dempo beyond the 150-mark. He struck three boundaries and one maximum. Later, he bowled his three overs economically to pick up 2 wickets for five runs.
Prescon were in the reckoning till Buddhadev Mangaldas was at the crease with the former Ranji Trophy cricketer hitting four sixes and two boundaries for his 19-ball 38. His knock was cut short as he reached the tournament-maximum 35-run mark for the batsmen.
The first batsman to get to 35 runs, can come back to the crease only when the team is nine wickets down and Buddhadev was back in the centre with Prescon requiring 45 off 14 balls. However, he couldn't add much to the total and Prescon were all out in the 19th over for 123 runs. For Dempo, Pranav Dhuri (2/13); Mukhtar Kadri, Ajay Pednekar and Nakul Mhamal (one wicket each) were among the wickets.
Playing their first match of the unique members-exclusive league, Dempo Challengers elected to bat on winning the toss of the coin flipped by chief guest Sharad Pednekar, the former First Class cricketer.
Geet Sail was the top scorer with 36 runs off 48 balls. He struck three boundaries in his patient knock. Captain Mukhtar Kadri provided the much needed aggression to the innings with a 23-ball 35, which included three boundaries and two sixes. All-rounder Mehank Dharwadkar contributed 20 runs with 2 boundaries in his 14-ball stay at the crease.
Dempo batters were slow to get into the groove and the two major partnerships of their innings were 37 for the fourth wicket between Geet and Mukhtar; 29 for the 5th wicket between Mukhtar and Kiran as Dempo reached a decent total of 155/5. Prescon Panthers' Narayan Kambli and Rohit Salgaonkar picked up a wicket each.
