Cricket: Amazon Betting T20 Championship 2022   Lakstars and GSP 7 win opening day matches |15 July 2022

Team Lakstars

Last Sunday at the Perseverance cricket ground saw the start of the new T20 tournament organised by the Seychelles Cricket Association.

In the first match, Lakstars played Vijay Warriors and won by four wickets.

Winning the toss, Lakstars captain Aruna opted to bowl and managed to restrict the Vijay Warriors with a maximum score of 97/10 at the end of 20 overs. Shanmugam Tharmenthiran (3 wickets), Thiwanka Rajapaksa (2 wickets) were among the best bowlers of Lakstars.

Stefan Knights 22(23) of Vijay Warriors was the best among the Vijay batters.

Upon chasing the target, despite Vijay bowlers Krishna Naidoo (3 wickets) Lalji Hirani (2 wickets) managed to strike early, a good batting performance from Kavinda 48(49) and Daminda 14(18) carried their team to victory.

Kavinda was selected as the player of the match for his all-round performance.

In the afternoon game, GSP 7 and GSP 7-A met each other.

Winning the toss, captain of the GSP 7-A team Arun Krishnan opted to field.  The bowlers of GSP 7-A struck hard-bowled well and led to a collapse of the top order of GSP 7s.

Despite that, responsible innings from Kalvin Deso 43(42) and Manish 16(10) helped GSP 7 to set a target of 112 runs. Bowlers Lijo of GSP 7-A grabbed 3 wickets. Upon chasing GSP 7’s bowlers exhibited a responsible bowling attack with Sanil (3 wickets), Kalvin Deso (2 wickets) managing to restrict the GSP 7-A within 86 runs to win the match for the GSP 7.

Among the batters Arun 27(45) and Selvakumar 13(10) were the best performers. Kalvin Deso was selected as the player of the match for his all-round performance.

Meanwhile, at the Roche Caïman field, four teams, namely Deevas Kings, BD Tigers, Narayan XI and Spartan Warriors played a one-off playoff knockout game to qualify for division 1.

In the morning match, Deevas Kings played BD Tigers. Winning the toss captain of Deevas Kings Deepak Radhakrishnan opted to bat first. Despite losing early wickets, a solid batting performance from Udhayan Sivakumar 44(54), Vijeesh Gopi 12(17), and Pushparaj 13(21) helped them set a target of 122 runs. Ruhul Amin (2 wickets) and Jahid Ali (2 wickets) of BD Tigers were among their best bowlers.

Upon chasing the target, BD Tigers batsmen tried to steady things but Deevas’ bowlers Udhayan Sivakumar (3 wickets), Selvakumar Natarajan (2 wickets) and Deepak Radhakrishnan (2 wickets) restricted them at 87 and won the match by 34 runs.

Appu 31(42) and Ashik 10(14) were the best among the BD Tigers’ batsmen.

 Udhayan Sivakumar was selected as man of the match for his best all-rounder performance.

In the afternoon, Narayan XI won the nail-biting thriller against Spartan Warriors. Winning the toss Spartan warriors opted to bowl first. Narayan XI Govind 30(47) and Abhijit 19(29) played responsibly and managed to set up a target of 98 runs at the end of 20 overs. Bowlers of Spartans Aswin (3 wickets), Meeran (2 wickets) and Kalai (2 wickets) were the best among them.

Upon chasing the target, Spartan Warriors’ batsmen Aswin 17(29) and Parthi 24(24) tried to steady things for them but bowlers Abhijit (2 wickets) and Rajesh (2 wickets) of Narayan prevented Spartans from winning by just leveling the score. This led to a tie-breaker and the team played the super over.

Sohil bowled the super over for Narayan and removed 2 wickets as Spartan scored just 2 runs, while batting a flash 4 runs from Abhijith led them to victory.

Eventually, Narayan XI and Deevas Kings won the qualifier and entered division one in style.

Contributed by Deepak Radhakrishnan, tournament director