Defending champions MMC (Red) after losing their opening tie, came into their own to beat former champions JSW (Jwala Sports Foundation) by 68 to open their account in the MCC-PRO-40 double-leg 6-Team league here at Oval Maidan here. Ankush Paswan played a stellar both with bat (33) and ball, capturing four wickets.
In another tie played at adjacent plot, MCC (Blue) recorded their third successive win, but not without overcoming some hiccups before prevailing in the last of the allotted overs by 1-wicket win over MCC (Black). The highlight of their win was the fine all-round performance by Amit Chauhan.
After put into bat, MCC (Red), thanks to top order led by Jay Kanabhar (65), Suhail Ansari (58) and Pankaj Jaiswal (48) and Ankush Paswan (33) hit up 254 fort seven in the allotted 40 overs. Chasing 255 to win, JSW batsmen failed to maintain tempo and were bowled out for 186 in the last of the allotted overs. Ankush after scoring 33 (2×6, 2×4) went on to capture four wickets for 26 runs.
Brief scores: MCC (Red) 254/7 off 40 0vers (Jay Kanabhar 65, Suhail Ansari 58, Pankaj Jaiswal 48, Ankush Paswan 38; Sultn Shah 2/26, Awais Khan 2/52) bt JSF 186 all out (Prajwal Rai 54, Pratik Chavan 39; Ankush Paswan 4/26, Pramod Kumar 2/39) by 68 runs.
MCC (Black) 137 all out (Hemant Patil 31; Amit Chauhan 4/12) lost to MCC (Blue) 140/9 (Amit Chauhan 37, Zaid Khan 3/24, Harshal Waghmare 2/24) by 1 wkt.