Rifles fail to fire in the rain

By Richard Boxall

Making their debut in the 2023 CyCF BAOFinancial Autumn T20 Cup on Sunday, the 1Rifles regiment at Dhekelia found the Moufflons out of range before rain washed out their match early in the second innings.

Moufflons made 205-6 in their 20 overs, led by Lakhwinder Singh, given a rare opportunity as opener, with 65, Shoaib Ahmad (46) and Waqar Ali (33). Rifles’ captain Bear Paice took 3 wickets but was also hit for 4 sixes as the batters maintained a 10 runs per over scoring rate.

Then, with the reply standing at 20-2, the heavens opened and the match had to be abandoned. It was doubly unfortunate as four matches were completed in sunshine in Limassol district on the same day.

The first of these saw a two-wicket win for Nicosia Tigers over Punjabi Kings, who had posted 140-7 thanks to Ravi Gill’s 37. With Tigers’ Roman Mazumder hitting 33 and skipper Shakhawat Hossain 41, a comfortable win seemed likely.

But with the Kings’ newcomer Anuj Sharma disrupting the middle order with 4-20, the Tigers found themselves scraping home with 8 wickets down, although they still had plenty of overs in hand.

The other game at Ypsonas was a high-scoring encounter which produced 433 runs by Markhor and Kipro Tigers of Limassol. Markhor set a stiff target of 228-6, led by Awais Ahmed (93 not out, including 10 sixes) and Hamza Rehman (66).

With Malik Nouman making 63, the Kipro Tigers made a brave effort to chase the runs, falling just short on 205-6 – a worthy effort but their second defeat of their debut season.

Meanwhile at Happy Valley a little rain disturbed the start of the Amdocs v Royal match, but soon gave way to warm sunshine. The Amdocs batters were unable to make hay as they struggled to get any real momentum into their innings. A partnership of 72 between Sagar Sanap and Hitesh Thadani did give them some hope as they reached 125-5, with Royal’s Karan Singh taking 2-18 from his 4 overs.

Royal lost a couple of early wickets and despite 50 by Umar Shah they were falling behind the run rate until captain Sarpreet Singh joined Rahul Behl and quickly finished the chase with three sixes to bring victory with 14 balls and 6 wickets to spare.

Limassol Qalandars made 188-8 against Everest, mainly due to a fine innings of 82 by Muhammad Huzaifa. Sahil Aktar bowled well for Everest with 3-22, but the total was a challenging one on the slow outfield.

Everest’s chase was hampered by losing wickets regularly. Ashish Bam hit an aggressive 30 and five other batters reached double figures, but none was able to play the sort of decisive knock that Huzaifa played for Qalandars. They were all out for 145 in the last over, losing by 43 runs.