Gully Cricketers played Rustons CC on 4th August. Gully won the toss and elected to bat. GC lost both openers with the score at 2. Pravin came to the batting rescue and hammered a quick fire 61 with some superb boundaries on both sides of the wicket (including a huge six that damaged the sight screen) He was supported at the other end by Chirag with a very patient 19. When Pravin fell, there was a middle order collapse. Sri Iyer came to the lower order batting rescue and with the tail put on 60 runs. This got the GC total to a challenging 168 (all out in 37.2overs).

Rustons CC started slow with tight wicket-to-wicket bowling from the GC boys supported by good fielding initially. Puneet and August were frugal with the runs in their 9 & 10 overs respectively. At 20 overs Rustons were scoring at 3 runs per over and it appeared as if the game was in control of Gully Cricketers. However Martin Noble played a patient first half to capitalise during the second half of the innings and accelerated the scoring and top scored with a fine 81. A few costly overs towards the end for GC took the game from a possible win at 34 overs stage to a tight last over finish with Rustons winning with 2 balls to spare. Again it was one of those days where despite Pravin's batting fire power, a swashbuckling all time high score of 30 by Sri, a terrific reflex catch by Senthil at a crucial time, Gully Cricketers were not able to grab the chance of a win and left with the feeling so close yet.....

P.S. Rahul Garg, who won the GC fielding award for last season was not quite ready to receive his trophy due to other "commitments", and was finally presented with the trophy by skipper August. He was so excited that he almost dropped the trophy! At least, his wife now knows he actually plays cricket on Sundays.