ICL league enjoys successful second week of action

ICL players line up for a photo following a successful second weekend of cricket action.

Sunday marked the second weekend of the Indoor Cricket League at Matthew Moss Sports Centre and once again there was some excellent cricket on display.

Rochdalians lead the early league table after they beat Badshahs on Sunday to make it two wins out of two.

Batting first, Badshahs could only muster 63 runs, which would have been worse had it not been for a knock of 35 from skipper Mo Manawar.

Rochdalians soon knocked of the runs with Faisal and Usman (26 runs) sharing an opening stand of 45. Faisal's 19 not out gave him fine all-round figures after he took two wickets for 10 runs with the ball.

The next game saw Allstars notch up an imposing 123 in their allotted 10 overs. Asif, opening the innings, hit a powerful 33 not out with the help of three sixs. Useful contributions from Gufran (21), Bukhari (15) and late hitting from Imran and Shah helped the score to move on to 123 but the impressive total proved not to be enough.

After a disappointing opening game Lahore Greens needed to move up a gear and they did just that, with Iqbal and Saleem paving the way in an opening partnership of 37, followed by an impressive 24 not out from Irfan. With a late onslaught from Tariq and Tayab, Lahore reached their target with an over to spare.

In the final match Punjab were pegged back to 77 runs with Waheed's 20 and captain Asim's 15 the only real cause of concern for the scorers. RYCC must have been thinking of a quick win but credit to Punjab they made a good fight of it. RYCC lost wickets on a regular basis but Qaiser (21) and Konain (13 not out), steadied the ship to reach their target in the 8th over. Punjab need to control their extras, 24, if they want to push for honours.

In the senior league, Seniors, batting first, reached 90 runs with useful contributions from Parwez-12, Zahid-12 and Tahir-10. Legends were able to keep the score below 100 thanks to the bowling of Ashfaq 3-17 and Abbas 2-11. Ali and Wahid started the batting for Legends with a useful 23 runs before Wahid was run-out for the second successive match and was not too pleased with his partner. To Ali's credit he focused on the situation and made an encouraging 24 runs, with Ashfaq making a quick fire 12 to see Legends home. Tahir was the pick of the bowlers for Seniors taking 3-24.

Aggressive hitting from Fayyaz (18) and a good partnership of 42 from Archie (25) and Saleem (18) paved the way for an easy win for Masters. Apart from Akhtar (23) nobody made any significant inroads in reply for Veterans. Fayyaz 2-13 and
Saleem-2-1 pick of the bowlers for Masters.

All the games are played at Mathew Moss Sports Centre every Sunday 11am-4pm.