Vadodara, February 17: When openers from the National Association for the Blind (NAB) team from Silvassa, making its debut at the All-Gujarat Blind Peoples' Cricket Tournament being held in Vadodara, stepped on the field in the finals, no one knew it was a brand new champion in the making. The Silvassa team, chasing the 101-run target put up by NAB Idar, won the title with eight wickets in hand, winding up the game in just 10 overs.

Silvassa opener Ganesh Bhusara made a sparkling 47 off 33 with six boundaries while Ramesh Jamadar contributed 27 with four fours, which helped them clinch the title. Interestingly, the players in the Silvassa team used to represent Valsad.

While initiating the chase, after the usual exchange of pleasantries between openers and teammates, the celebrations began in the Silvassa camp as Bhusara was demolishing the Idar bowling attack.

However, in comparison to the high-scoring league matches and semi-finals, the final proved to be bit of a dampener with Idar batsmen falling short of expectation and making a meagre total of 100.

Silvassa got a direct berth for the finals due to a higher run rate in its league matches while Idar played the semi-finals against K K School and Home for the Blind of Bhavnagar. Idar captain Purushottam Patel made an unbeaten century to pile up a mammoth 282 for one wicket only, and in reply, Bhavnagar lost wickets at regular intervals and submitted meekly putting only 139 on board.

Once again, Idar dominated in the man of the series award tally with its two all rounder, Bhalaji Damor (35 runs/2 wickets) and Bipin Patel (52 runs/3 wickets) being awarded man of the series in the B-1 category for people with complete blindness and B-2 categories for those with 5 per cent vision

B-3: with 10 per cent vision. In the B-3 category (players with 10 per cent vision), Silvassa team member Ganesh Bhusara won the man of the series award for his superb performance both with the bat and ball. He made 126 runs in two matches and took four wickets.