Yagod Morris Cricket 'A' produced the result of the day with a shock win over Dialogz Dragons in the latest round of Israel Night League matches.
While the sirens sounded last week, throughout the southern and central regions of Israel, causing two weeks of postponements to the day league, the night cricketers however managed to play some cricket.
The performance of the round undoubtedly went to the Yagod Morris Cricket 'A' who produced a performance of champions by thumping one of the favourites, Dialogz Dragons by 50 runs.
The Dragons, fresh from a convincing win over last year's champions Pearl Dental, had no answer to the professionalism of YMCA. Dialogz Dragons captain, Herschel Gutman said: "We were completely outplayed - the YMCA performance took us all by surprise, they were far superior in batting, bowling and fielding.
"Credit to the YMCA players who not only were miles better than us on the night, but also for their excellent sportsmanship during the game. I am sure that this is a small hiccup on the way to hopefully contesting the final."
YMCA won the toss and openers Clint Rubin and Brett Hickson got them off to a flyer before Paul Kloot, David Benjamin, Sam Berkowitz, David Leshansky, Aryeh and Benjy Myers took the game completely away from the Dragons. The Dragons run chase started off poorly with six wickets falling in the first four overs. Youngsters Eli Heilbrun and Yair Nagavkar performed admirably, while 34 runs off eight balls, including four 6's, by Gutman was not enough to save the Dragons from their first defeat of the season.
YMCA skipper, Brett Hickson was over the moon with the result, which dislodged the Dialogz Dragons from first position to fifth, while his team moved up to fourth. He said: "We had trained hard for this match and knew it would be a challenge after watching the Dialogz Dragons thrash Pearl Dental a few weeks earlier. The Dialogz Dragons have a classy batting lineup and I felt that they could chase down a high score.
"We changed our tactics slightly, throwing caution to the wind on occasion and it paid off as I was sure that 120 would be a competitive score.
"The next challenge is to keep these excellent performances up throughout the season which will give us every chance of a semi-final position. Special mention to YMCA's David Leshansky and Aryeh Meyers who showed a tremendous level of sportsmanship to not run out one of the Dialogz young players.
Hickson was also congratulatory to the Dragons for "continuing their policy of introducing young players into their team," adding that "the future of this wonderful game is, as always, investing in youth".
In the league's other match, last year's champions, Pearl Dental CC kick-started their season with a comfortable 42-run victory over the YMCB.
YMCB openers Yonatan Karmi and Jonathan Cohen gave their team a solid start with a 37-run partnership, before the Pearl Dental bowlers pulled things back and restricted the score to 70.
This was always going to be an easy task for Pearl, but the YMCB players produced an inspiring performance to ensure the game was pushed until the last four overs. Captain David Wiseman was delighted with the win, which puts their season back on track.
The KAT Israemploy and Super Lions Lod match was heading for a close finish before the heavens opened, leaving both sets of players not only soaked, but also to ponder on what could have been. While the rain is excellent for Israel, its not excellent for cricket.
Upcoming fixtures this week sees the Pommeranz Juice Good Old Boys play Gold Insurance Bet Shemesh Lightning and Pearl Dental Cricket Club playing KAT Israemploy Tigers.
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