Two of the newcomers to the Israel Night Cricket League have sent out strong messages to the rest of the teams as both teams registered comprehensive victories in the opening round of matches.
Dialogz Dragons produced the result of the round by trouncing last year's champions, Pearl Dental Cricket Club by a massive 75-run margin.
Debutant, Derek Bloom, excelled with a powerful display of batting as he amassed 31 runs in the 14 balls that he faced to elevate the Dragons to 144.
Earlier in the innings, Amir Mizroch, Kevin Nafte, Simon Minitzer, and Matthew Hoffman all set up the innings well for Bloom to combine with David Myers to put on an undefeated stand of 52 from just four overs.
Captain, Herschel Gutman and super talented, 11-year-old Yair Nagavkar put on a useful stand of 34 to take the game away from Pearl Dental.
Pearl Dental were always going to struggle to reach the target and were restricted to 69 in their 16 overs. Young Nagavkar stole the show with the ball, showcasing his superb skills as he took four wickets in the two overs that he bowled.
Pearl captain, David Wiseman was gracious after the match saying: "We were outplayed by a very solid unit, Dialogz put us under pressure from the start and we never recovered.
Hopefully this is just a small hiccup on the way to defending the trophy."
Super Lions Lod, captained by former Israeli international, Gershon Massil beat another new team, Yagod Morris Cricket 'A' by 50 runs.
Batting first, Brett Hickson's Yagod Morris Cricket 'A' team did well to post 60 against a very strong bowling line-up. The YMCA showed tremendous fight and spirit to restrict SLL to 19 at the halfway mark, but the tremendous talents of current internationals, Yefet Nagavkar, Eshkol Solomon and Shailesh Banjerra, supported by Massil, put on 91 in the last eight overs to seal an opening win for the Lions.
In other matches, last years runners-up, Pommeranz Juice Good Old Boys (102) put in a solid performance by beating the Modi'in Young Lions (79) and last year's bronze medal winners, Gold Insurance BS Lightning, had a comfortable start to the season by beating the Bet Shemesh Royals who will want to improve this season on last year's bottom place finish.
This week sees another newcomer, Yagod Morris Cricket 'B' take on KAT Israemploy in what should be a very tight match. The other match sees the Bet Shemesh Royals and the Modi'in Young Lions go head to head, with both teams wanting to get their first victory of the season under their belt.
