Season Summary for Vestli Cricket Club U13 Teams 2023

It was a rapid-fire but a fruitful season for the boys. Both our U13 teams have now played all their games barring one that is scheduled in August. 

A team, led by Ismail Omar, played 9 games and won 7, lost 1 and got a walkover over Fossum. Haugerud U13, against whom we have lost three games in last three years proved to be our nemesis again. We lost the first game against them in the penultimate ball by 7 wickets. Haugerud's Husnain Masood had hit such huge sixes in that game that anyone's moral could have gone down. But a week later, the boys bounced back nicely. We made a plan to bowl slow yorker length balls to Masood and boys executed beautifully, getting him out in the second over. Following that the Haugerud team got all out giving us a modest total of 64 that the boys achieved in the 7th over without loosing any wickets. 

The take away from this season would be the courage shown by Haider Ali and Pranaov Ranjith to open the bowling against Haugerud despite knowing how hard their batters would hit. They stuck to that plan despite a lot of pressure and came out on the winning side. Ismail led the squad from the front in all departments, batting, bowling and fieldin and all players performed well. Special mention to out little ones in the A team, Chahal, Ashar and Ibrahim. These are young boys are new  to the team and did not get a lot of opportunities to bat or bowl. But they showed up at every game and put their whole hearted effort into fielding. The are epitome of team spirit and every one should learn from them. Rushank was lethal behind the wickets getting 7 dismissals. Vandit bowled beautifully in middle overs and Lakshya supported both batting and bowing departments in alsmost all games. Hassan our most experienced boy played very few games but he was instrumental in those wins.

B Team came to the element in their 3rd season and also won 6 of the 7 games they played. They lost against a strong MASK side and are eager to bounce back in August. B team had close games against Fjord B who are developing really well. We also congratule the new teams Sentrum and Strømmen who put a good show.

Several take aways for the B team this season of which Nirdosh Patel has been the biggest revealation. This boy trained with us only for 6 sessions before start of the season and on the first match was not able to bowl within the pitch. In the span of 3 weeks, he was bowling good lines, scored a couple of boundaries in the last game and was travelling at light-speed while fielding, diving around, putting his body on line. That was all his thirst to play. Our most senior player Mohd. Arham who is  now 8 years old bolwed good lengths this season and also scored his first boundary. Nishal was our strike bowler this year and was both lethal and economical in the middle. Bhavya was too good at the death defending whatever we needed in the last over. Aarav led the batting from front and scored at good strike rate. But is was Arham Bavaria's batting that took everyone by surprise. He batted beautifully in several games. Ishaq was good behind the wickets. Vrishank, Abdurrehman and  Krishil did not play many games but contributed where they could.