Finals review By Gowtham Nedunuri

2009 World Tball champions MEGABYTES

After lot of effort went to into to find a suitable ground to play the grand Finale, finally High meadows was selected as the Battle field for DCL 2009 Championships…
Megabytes vs Juggeranuts is always a gr8 battle considering their rich History. Juggs owned Megabytes until 2006 and Finally Megabytes turned the tables from 2007 and won their last 3 encounters (07, 08, 09 reg season)..

History wise lot was on stake for this Game.

Megabytes had shocking news in the morning knowing that Lightning Jeet could not make it to the finals because of his work commitments. As that debacle was not enough to shake up the megz, they received a further blow when they came to know that Aditya could not play the game too as his Michca 20-20 final got postponed from 11:00 Am to 12:30 pm because of heavy downpour the previous day. With two of their Big Fish out even before a single ball was bowled the Megz had to make last min strategy changes to get prepared for the Finals.
Both the teams assembled @ 1:00 PM and @ this time news spread that Juggs did not have Sundar for this match too..

The toss was conducted @ 1:30 PM. Megabytes Captain with his excellent toss winning percentage (<10%)>90%).. Hari always wins the toss when he calls so Megabytes Captain asked him to go for the toss and make sure he calls it..
This is the Funny part:
Hari goes for the toss along with Dr. Anand and looses it. Upon knowing the result the megz skip says don’t worry S*** happens. Just then I came to know that Hari did not call for the toss. Surprised I asked Hari why did u not call for the toss as we discussed extensively what benefits (Haris winning percentage when calling toss) we could reap if he calls the toss. To this Hari replied that either of the Umpire Vijay Namburi or Dr. Anand sold a dummy to him saying that since Juggs were from Rochester hills and Megabytes was from Farmington, Juggs were the Guest team and hence would have the opportunity to call first :D..
Jokes apart, Juggs win the Toss and choose to Bat.
Megabytes started of with Hari and Matta..Juggs shuffled their batting order to surprise Megz and sent in Joy along with my DCL idol Sriram. Coming from a SF game where the Megz team did not even concede even a single wide in the entire game against Brownstown in the SF, Hari started off the proceedings for Megz with two wides of the 1st two balls. Matta bowled the 2nd over and took the wicket of Joy who was taken brilliantly by Arpan @ forward short leg. The next over Sriram played a pull shot of a shorter one from Hari and the ball skied to the keeper. The entire Megz team had their hearts in their mouth as they knew how much this wicket would mean to them. Jala took a simple skier and the the great man was not to play another game winning knock this time around in the finals. Azam and Ashwin joined in with 2 wickets falling and played defensively. I thought juggz were over defensive and soon the score read 8 overs 9 runs 2 wickets..For the break the Juggs were 12 overs 22 for 2 courtesey a maiden from Raghu in the 12th over..Even after the break the Juggz never tried to accelerate but were slowly accumulating runs..@ one stage they were 40 odd for 4 wickets in 17 overs when the Megz Captain brought in Himslef and Binod to the attack. Goutham and Binod took the remaining 6 wickets between them and the Megz bundled the Juggs who averaged 80 odd against teams in pool X for 51 in the 24th over.
(Goutham 4 wickets, Binod 2 wickets, Raghu 2 wickets, Hari 1 wicket Matta 1 wicket)
Megabytes started their chase cautiously. Joy was spitting venom with this pace and Ramesh was choking both the openers with his tight line and length. The Megz then lost Harish and in came Praveen. Praveen accelerated for a bit while enjoying his luck (2 lives) and finally fell for an equally good catch from Juggs @ forward short leg. With just 3 balls to spare for the break Megabytes opener Hari (Rajini 1 to 11) fell and Megabytes were all of sudden 25/3. Megz Skipper joined Matta and soon they started to rotate strike and then Megz accelerated with 2 sixes to complete a historic run chase to win the DCL 2009 Championship by 7 wickets.
(Goutham 17*, Praveen 14, Matta 6* )

It was a great day for the Megabytes as they broke their DCL curse to finally win the Coveted DCL CUP.

It was a fabulous end to a great season as many players had to sacrifice a lot of things. Megabytes had 75% of their players playing MichCa 40-40 and 20-20 and had to go through lot of pain trying to juggle between players for all the leagues.
The Megz danced and dined with the Fair lady from dusk till dawn…

Special Thanks to all the Blog owners who piled up the pressure on the remaining teams and all the Analysts who spiced up DCL 2009 with their breath taking reviews.
We went a step ahead this season even bringing in Nature and Wind into the Mix :) Thanks to Sai Viswanatha and Jagan for taking on field interviews and making both the finalists feel like stars atleast for a couple of hours. Waiting to see those clips and pics.
Last but not the Least I would rlly Like to thank all the DCL fans for making the Finale a Great success. To all the Supporters of Megabytes and Juggeranuts, Friends, All the Ladies who made this DCL 2009 season a grand success.

To the score sheet afficandos - SCORE SHEET UPDATED FOR Team MEGABYTES.