South Zone Veterans Cricket in full swing

KARACHI: Omar Associates, Gold Bridge Media and Rashid Latif Cricket Academy (RLCA) registered victories their respective rivals in the latest round of the South Zone matches in the 19th National Veterans Cup Cricket Tournament 2017-18. According to the information made available by the Pakistan Veterans Cricket Association (PVCA) here on Tuesday, Omar Associates defeated Fact Date Engineering by nine runs and RLCA overwhelmed Lucky Knits here at the TMC Ground while Gold Bridge Media overcame Haseen Habib by 13 runs at the Eastern Star Ground.

Batting first, after winning the toss, Omar Associates scored 170 for six in the allotted 25 overs with the top three Sajid Ali (55 off 40 balls), Imran Javed (46 off 40 balls) and Jaffer Qureshi (35 off 32 balls) setting a strong foundation. The innings was contained by left-arm spinners Rizwan Qureshi (2-21) and Hasrat Nawaz (2-42). They successfully defended the score by bowling out their opponents for 161 in 23.4 overs with the spin duo of Mahmood KK (3-21) and Jaffer Qureshi (3-29) doing the damage after Ghazanfar Khan (35 off 19 balls) and Rizwan Qureshi (32 off 31 balls) had threatened to run away with the game. Jaffer Qureshi was declared Man of the Match. Opener Muhammad Rizwan’s 86 off 42 balls containing four sixes and 11 fours powered RLCA to an impressive total of 256 for seven in 25 overs despite fine bowling from the Lucky Knits medium-pacer Ali Raza (3-35) and left-arm spinner Aamir Shahzad (2-40).

Lucky Knits, in reply, crashed to 110 all out in 20.4 overs with Fawad Sajid (40 off 19 balls) fighting a lone battle against the RLCA spinners Saif Khan (3-28) and Asim Jah (2-5). The Man of the Match award, however, was clinched by Muhammad Rizwan for his whirlwind knock.

Gold Bridge Bridge amassed 214 for nine in 25 overs against Haseen Habib with Mazhar Ali (43 off 31 balls) and Kamran Hussain (42 off 34 balls) being the leading scorers while off-spinners Ahmed Hussain (2-13) and Omar-ul-Haq (2-43) shared the bowling honours. Babar Hussain’s 70 off 45 balls with the help of four sixes and two fours put Haseen Habib in front but leg-spinner Zulfiqar Lehri changed the game with a four-wicket haul to be adjudged Man of the Match. Haseen Habib was all out for 201 in 24.5 overs. A total of 103 outfits from 50 cities, having been divided in 31 groups, are taking part in the tournament being sponsored by Omar Associates (Pvt) Ltd with Naya Nazimabad being the co-sponsors.