Sir Ali B Too Good For Ruaraka

Sir Ali went into the game in high spirits having won comfortably last week's fixture. Ruaraka won the toss and put Sir Ali to bat on a moving, damp wicket. Sir Ali were on the backfoot early on as their two openers, Asif Khan and Akbar got out with the scores at 12. Amazingly, the match was started without an umpire though Joshua Oyieko finally showed up after the two batsmen were out. From then on, Sir Ali took the game to Ruaraka with Abdul Rehman and Kashif Khan playing sensibly and taking the score from 2/12 to 64 before Khashif was out on 25 attempting a shot over midwicket only to get caught by the wicketkeeper and in the process breaking his bat! Abdul, who seems to be in very good form and Nadeem Butt then upped the run rate before Nadeem was bowled for a very good 41. Tariq Alvi chipped in with a quick 27. The Ruaraka bowlers bowled relatively well, especially the opening pair of Ritesh and Nguru, with the latter very unlucky not to get a wicket. Ritesh finished with 5 wickets, a great effort from him. Abdul went on to make a fine 125 and take Sir Ali to an imposing 263 all out from only 43 overs. Ruaraka will be relieved that they were able to bowl them out before the full 50. Despite the total, Sir Ali missed the full 4 batting points by only 12 runs. Asked to bowl at least 5 overs before the lunch break, Sir Ali took full advantage when Ali Rehman removed Nguru. This seemed to affect the Ruaraka team and none of the batsmen really shone. Ali Rehman bowled well to finish with three wickets. Although Sir Ali were put under pressure early on by the Ruaraka batsman-wicketkeeper, Ramesh, who punished Sir Ali opening bowler Tariq Alvi, Sir Ali never let go of the game. They took wickets at regular intervals and thus put pressure on the Ruaraka batsmen. With the introduction of Abdul Rehman who took 4 wickets for only 7 runs, Sir Ali won the game easily. Ruaraka had one batsman who was injured so they scored 83 for the loss of 9 wickets.
It will be interesting to see Sir Ali next week when Abdul Rehman plays for the A team.

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