PANAJI: Kiran Shirwaikar’s man-of-the match display, powered Dempo Challengers to a 32-run victory over Prescon Panthers on the second day of the 1st Panjim Gymkhana Members League (PGML) at PG ground, Campal here on Sunday.
Shirwaikar came up with an important late-order inning of 14-ball 25 that took Dempo beyond the 150-mark. He struck three boundaries and one maximum. Later, he bowled his three overs economically and picked 2 wickets for five runs.
Prescon, who had defeated LPK11 in the PGML opener on Saturday, were in the reckoning till Buddhadev Mangaldas was at the crease with the former Ranji Trophy cricketer hitting four sixers and two boundaries for his 19-ball 38 runs. His knock was cut short when he was in good touch with the tournament rules restricting a batsman to a maximum of a 35-run knock. The first batsman to get to 35 runs, can come back to the crease only when the team is nine wickets down and Buddhadev was back in the centre with Prescon requiring 45 of 14 balls. However, he couldn’t add much to the total and Prescon were all out in the 19th over for 123 runs.
Among the wickets for Dempo, were Pranav Dhuri (2/13); Mukhtar Kadri, Ajay Pednekar and Nakul Mhamal (one wicket each).
Playing their first match of the unique PGML T20 exclusive members league, Dempo Challengers elected to bat on winning the toss of the coin flipped by chief guest former First Class cricketer Sharad Pednekar.
Geet Sail was the top scorer with 36 runs off 48 balls. He struck three boundaries in his patient knock. Captain Mukhtar Kadri provided the much needed aggression to the inning with a 23-ball 35, which included three boundaries and two sixers. All-rounder Mehank Dharwadkar contributed 20 runs with 2 boundaries in his 14-ball stay at the crease.
Dempo batters were slow to get into the groove and the two major partnerships of their innings were 37 for the fourth wicket between Geet and Mukhtar; 29 for the 5th wicket between Mukhtar and Kiran as Dempo reached a decent total of 155/5.
Prescon Panthers’ Narayan Kambli and Rohit Salgaonkar picked up a wicket each.
