Red Bull Campus Cricket Nationals 2019 - Semifinals Review

The Red Bull Campus Cricket tournament has been pretty successful in its endeavour to promote young talents in the last eight seasons and the 2019 edition of the tournament has seen a plethora of fine young talents showcasing their skill and will to earn relevance of the highest order. Beginning their journey back in 2012 and now has over 300 teams and 30 cities connected with it.

Over the years, many prominent stars like KL Rahul, Karun Nair and even Niroshan Dickwella from Sri Lanka earned limelight through this tournament. The 2019 edition is now down to two teams having begun with over 300. On a hot and humid Thursday in Jaipur, Hindustan College from Chennai and DAV College from Chandigarh made it to the finals.

The first semi-final was played between Hindustan College from Chennai and the champions from the previous edition MMCC College, Pune. After winning the toss and choosing to bowl first, Hindustan College batsmen got their side off to a slow start. Tamil Nadu’s Ranji player Shah Rukh Khan was dismissed early and the side lost half their players soon enough.

Skipper Sudhan Sanjeev and Shamvikram’s partnership in the middle overs ensured they got to a respectable total towards the end. They finished with 123 runs for the loss 9 wickets and for the side from Pune, Mukesh Choudhary chipped in with a five-fer.

The MMCC side never got going with the bat as Samrudh Bhatt, NS Harish and Shah Rukh Khan stemmed the flow of runs and kept piling wickets at crucial intervals. There was no resistance shown by the Pune batsmen, who eventually folded up for 81 runs in 16 overs. Shah Rukh Khan picked up 3 wickets for the side while NS Harish was the pick of the bowlers having scalped 4s.

Chandigarh set up a finale date with Chennai

It was another low-scoring game in the second semi-final between DAV College from Chandigarh and Alfala University, Delhi. The Jaipur tracked played pretty slow and tested the batters’ full potential, but unlike the first semi-final, this one went down the wire. Mayank and Sanyam Saini withstood the challenge and stitched a fantastic partnership together.

Mayank registered a fifty whilst Saini scored a crucial 25 off 22 balls. Some decent strikes from the bat of Ankit Kumar saw them muster 128 runs batting first, losing seven wickets. Deepak Kumar was the pick among the Delhi bowlers, who returned with impressive figures of 3/16 in his three overs.

In the run chase, the Alfala University batsmen got starts but no one converted it into anything big. This hampered their ambitions big time as they started to lose control over the game. Adding to the brilliant bowling was some stupendous fielding effort, especially the blinder at deep backward square from Sanyam Saini that drew curtains to the Delhi skipper’s stay in the middle.

Anubhav Ahuja and Parth Palawat made valuable contributions of 35 and 28 respectively to get Delhi back on track. Although their partnership made the match interesting, Chandigarh made a comeback with quick wickets and the balance swung yet again in their favour. Delhi needed 8 runs in the final over bowled by Gurnoor Brar, who sensationally held his composure and gave just six runs away. DAV entered the final by the skin of their teeth and will be locking horns with Chennai on Friday for the title.

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