Race to the
Super 7

Deccan Chargers chose to bowl, and Ankur Sah immediately made the morning feel like a very small place for Wide warriors to bat. His first over struck early, then his return in the third produced two more wickets; by the end of over five, he had 3/10 in three overs, with fourteen dots doing most of the talking 🧱. Hemant Joshi dug in at the other end, but the 12-ball rule interrupted his first stay at 2 off 12. Wide warriors were 9/3 after three overs, and the innings had already begun searching for spare oxygen 😬 Sohail…

Sohail Mohammed kept the squeeze alive in the fourth and sixth, while Harish Jain arrived in the seventh with a beautifully inconvenient spell of 1/4, and Sudersan Jayanthi Sridharan followed in the eighth with 1/2 🔒. Overs six through eight yielded only eight runs and three wickets, which is less an over-by-over phase than a group project in making batting uncomfortable 🧊. Manish Mannan eventually supplied some resistance, and Parth Shirolawala added another timely wicket, but Wide warriors never found a boundary rush. UV Yadav and Chinmay K then took over the closing act, Chinmay striking twice in the thirteenth before UV returned at the death to finish with 2/13 in 2.5 overs. Wide warriors closed on 71/11, with Manish Mannan top-scoring with 14 off 20 and Hemant Joshi adding 11 off 24 after returning to the middle.

Deccan Chargers began the chase as if 72 were a personal insult. Ramesh Sarepalli raced to 23 off 12, and Shiva Perumalsamy’s second and fourth overs leaked ten and seventeen, giving the Chargers a 39/0 launchpad ⚡. Madhan Reddy joined the party with 16 off 12, and suddenly the target looked less like a target and more like a formality wearing pads 🚀. Then Hemant Joshi changed the mood: after a quiet first over, he removed Ankur Sah in the seventh and struck again in the same over as the chase briefly discovered suspense 🎯.

Hemant was not finished. His return in the eleventh took his innings figures to 3/9 in three overs, while the final three overs conceded only eight runs and one wicket 📉; the required rate had already collapsed into something almost apologetic. Sudersan Jayanthi Sridharan helped shepherd the middle passage, and Prashant Sridharan supplied the final boundary off Arpit Sanghavi as Deccan Chargers reached 72/3 in 11.2 overs 🏁. Ankur Sah took Man of the Match for the complete Saturday package: 7 off 8 with 3/10, a morning of early damage, late calm, and absolutely no interest in letting the game become boring 🎉