The annual rivalry in the battle of Alberta, in cricket, (the Alberta Masters Cup) was renewed this weekend at Calgary’s lovely Riley Park and the teams could not ask for finer weather as the entire weekend was greeted with warm temps and glorious sunshine. The event was amply covered by the local press: CBC Radio and Television, CBC French TV, Global TV and Shaw TV; with a larger-than-usual number of curious fans sitting around the sidelines.
Match Report:
Day One: Calgary 260/5, Edmonton 227 all out.
Calgarywon the toss and elected to bat. They were given a solid start by openers Jonathan Bray (15) and Adnan Kirmani (107 retired). Kirmani dominated the Edmonton attack, launching scintillating maximums all around the ground.
Batting at number three, Nayan Desai continued the aggressive pace set by the openers before falling for a breezy 21. Ron Saywack joined Kirmani at the crease and chipped in with an innocuous 18 before being trapped LBW.
Sohail Abdullah, batting in the sixth spot, slammed an entertaining and whirlwind 57 n o to help boost the Calgary total to a seemingly insurmountable 260 in their allotted 40 overs.
Edmonton bowlers: Phani Addala 2/42, Collin Bowman 1/58 and Ozzy Mohammed 1/37.
In reply, Edmonton made things rather interesting. Leading the charge, as always, was skipper Steve Dutchin who began slowly but gained confidence as he pulled towering sixes over the mid-wicket region before being caught late deep on the long-on boundary, for 79, when Edmonton appeared destined to overtake Calgary’s tall order. His exit suddenly ended all the drama as they fell short of the target by 33 runs.
Calgary bowlers: Ron Saywack 3/42, Jadusingh 2/21, Nayan Desai 2/28.
Day Two: Calgary 128 all out, Edmonton 129/7.
Edmonton won the toss and riskily sent Calgary in. It was a gamble that paid off as the Calgary batters struggled all day to score and could only manage a paltry 128 all out. Phani Addala, as the previous day, finished with the best bowling figures for Edmonton with 3/21.
In the chase, Edmonton lost four quick wickets for 27 runs to give Calgary a glimmer of hope of a fortuitous win. But that soon faded as Junior Rohoman (39) and Ted Brown (41) steadied the ship to see the northerners home to a convincing victory and, thus, retention of the coveted Alberta Masters Cup for a third year in a row.
Footnotes:
Hylton Osbourne was MVP Day One—scored a sizzling 61.
Ted Brown was MVP Day Two
Adnan Kirmani was Man-of-the Series.
Vancouver’s scholarly cricket aficionado, Angus Melder, was called upon at the presentation ceremonies to hand out the hardware to the above winners.
Umpires: Spencer Gooden, Surendra Bhandari and Angus Melder
Scorers: Art Lake, Sanjeev Kad
Ron Saywack
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