Last pair help New Hind upset holders MIG

MUMBAI: Luck seemed to be smiling on the side with the 'bridesmaid' tag in Mumbai cricket, New Hind Sporting Club, who seem to miss out on major titles. Two years ago they missed out on the A Division Kanga league title on the last day. Last season they escaped relegation on quotient when they tied with National. On Sunday, on the opening day of the 62nd Strategen Dr HD Kanga cricket league New Hind were staring defeat at 75 for 9 chasing holders MIG Cricket Club's score of 87.
A catch was missed by Amit Dani at slip of Kunal Swarupriya, which denied off spinner Ankush Jaiswal a hat-trick.Pratik Kar then escaped being run out by keeper Ghadigaonkar's throw from long leg, a decision the MIG players thought should have gone in their favour. And another lbw decision that went the other way saw the last pair of Kar and Swarupriya, a debutant from the u-19 probables, scrape through with a last wicket stand of priceless 13 runs.
An elated Ramesh Wajge, of New Hind, the newly-elected MCA tournament secretary, said, "It's good to start with a win. We were without nine of our stars like Dhaval Kulkarni, Bhavin Thakkar, Vinit Indulkar, Prashant Naik, Sushant Marathe. We had four recruits from Fort Vijay but could play only two as Shoeb Shaikh and Prashant Bhoir were unavailable playing in the KSCA tournament." The two who played, Kshemal Waingankar and Bipin Waghela, however made the difference. Waingankar had MIG's big-scoring veteran Sandesh Paralkar playing on for a duck and got another wicket. Left-hander Waghela, often hit to a short leg side boundary to make the top score of 25. But he was bowled by Chintan Shah and with Ankush's double strike swung the around only for victory to be snatched away.
The only other team to score first-innings points were Victory who scored over Worli. Debutants Payyade toiled as Police scored 129 with Rajesh Tandel getting 46. Two other sides back in the senior ranks, Parsi Gymkhana and Young Maharashtra did well to draw their matches. Shashank Singh scored 59 for Parsee against SPG.
In the 'B' Division Ajit Agarkar (4 wkts) and Vinayak Samant (44) helped relegated Cricket Club of India score over Maskati. An all-round show by Yash Kulkarni (2-15 and 32) and six wickets by medium-pacer A Parsekar (6-15) highlighted Kandivali's victory over Dadar Parsee Zorastrian. Virendra Kambli, the younger brother of Vinod had a 5-for-8 haul for Apollo against Shivaji Park Youngsters.