Assam under GrahamB (story)

[GrahamB]

I've decided to take on the challenge of managing the most lowly rated club in the Indian League to see if I could turn things around.

Player contract new coming shortly.

[GrahamB]

Contracts

Of the 10 players whose contracts were expiring, we chose to re-sign the following:

Rishav Das (opening batsman)
Parvej Musaraf (opening batsman)
Sumit Ghadijaonkar (wicketkeeper/batsman)
Mayuhk Hazarika (SLA bowler)
Rahul Singh (SLA bowler)

Looking at our budget, we decided that if there were any standout youth players whose second team averages were on a par with the best established domestic players available, it would be more prudent to sign them.
So we signed three youth players:

Amit Manjrekar (opening batsman)
Tarun Banergee (batsman)
Sandeep Goel (RMF bowler)

With those players signed, we now had to look at an overseas player plus reserve overseas player.
With our bowling looking to need strengthening more than our batting, we signed these two:

Yugeesha Dishan (SLA bowler from Sri Lanka)
Naeem Ahmed (OS bowler from Bangladesh)

A good sized squad of 28 players to start the season.

[GrahamB]

Sadly, we got creamed in our opening T20 match.
We racked up a decent total, but obviously our bowling tactics need re-thinking.

[GrahamB]

Steep learning curve.
This time our batting let us down, and although we had them in trouble, a high-scoring unbeaten partnership got them through.

[GrahamB]

I guess I was hopeful thinking that a few signings could turn this team around in dramatic fashion, but they're a decent bunch of fighters, so that gives us some hope going forwards.
Services put up a challenging total and despite the best efforts of our batsmen, we just couldn't keep up with the required run rate.

[GrahamB]

A win at last and a convincing one at that!
Sikkim crumbled a low score and we took our time chasing it down.
Although yet to find form with the bat, Banerjee is proving to be a useful fifth bowler.

[GrahamB]

Another match in which we were competitive, but we just lack a little quality in both the batting and fielding departments.
All-rounders will definitely be on the wish-list for next season.

[GrahamB]

We were again outclassed as Himachal Pradesh posted a huge score for us to chase.
As is so often the case, unless you can keep up with the requires run rate, you just fall further and further behind.
We achieved a decent enough score though.

[GrahamB]

Whoa! this was cruel!
After we collapsed to be 125 all out with several overs to spare, we had Kerala at 79/9, only for the last pair to get them to 125 all out also.
They batted first in the Super Over and it was a 6 hit by them that made all the difference, as we could not surpass their score.

[GrahamB]

Not a good way to start the season.

[GrahamB]

Our best batsmen in the T20 Domestic

Amit Manjrekar - 38.29
Parvej Musaraf - 34.57

Our best bowlers in the T20 Domestic

Avinav Choudhury - 22.80
Yugeesha Dishan - 22.87
Sandeep Goel - 23.83
Tarun Banerjee - 25.00

[GrahamB]

We started the OD Domestic competition with a relatively comfortable win.
A mammoth opening stand between Manjrekar and Musaraf meant that we were never going to be in trouble chasing down the target.

[GrahamB]

We came a cropper in our second OD match, as Andhra put up a big score for us to chase.
To be honest though, we lost wickets without even trying to be too aggressive, so there wasn't too much we could do about that.

We went in with three batsmen who can bowl part-time, hoping to cobble together 10 overs between them to fill a fifth bowler allotment.
With no decent all-rounder in the squad, the thought was that this would strengthen our batting too.

[GrahamB]

A second OD win for us gives a 2-1 record at this early stage.
A tidy bowling performance strangled the Himachal Pradesh innings, with regular wickets falling, five of them to Abir Chakraborty in his first OD outing of the season.
We had little difficulty chasing down the target.

[GrahamB]

We won the toss and decided that our best chance against the strong Uttar Pradesh was to put them into bat and try and restrict them to a score that we could chase.
However, it didn't work out that way unfortunately, as they put our bowlers to the sword.
During our chase, we did learn about better ways that could be tried, but of course the score we were chasing was always going to be too much for us.