CSPL Match Report

Berne 229-9 in 40 overs (Aseem 139, Habib 3-22) beat Freiburg Nomads CC 128-10 in 25.5 overs (Vijay 74, Krishna 4-37) by 101 runs
Full scorecard

Berne made the journey to Germany to Freiburg im Breisgau to play newcomers Freiburg Nomads in their first game in the Cricket Switzerland Premier league (CSPL).
In direct contrast to the Berne's Mr. Pickwick Twenty20 match a week previous that was rained off without a ball being balled, this match was to be played in glorious sunshine.

Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start the absent Berne captain was declared to have forfeited the toss and were put into bat, as Freiburg looked to take full advantage of the visitor's first visit to Seepark's artificial outfield and Flicx pitch.

The tactic appeared to work perfectly, as Berne lost two wickets to Krishna's first over, both clean bowled. Sajit emulated Krishna's preformance, taking another two wickets in the second, the first bowled and the second a simple catch. Berne were in all sorts of trouble at 6 runs for 4 wickets in 2 overs.
There were signs of a recovery as Berne moved on to 40--4 off 7 overs until Anish (16) played in to the Flicx pitch to offer first change Freiburg bowler, Nila, the simplest of caught & bowleds.
Aseem came to the crease and immediately instilled a calmness that was clearly missing in the Berne top order. Supported well by his team mates Kumar (8), Bhatti (21) & Malik (10*) at the other end, Aseem scored an excellent 139 before being caught on the boundary going for his fourteenth six of his innings.
As unlikely as it appeared after 2 overs, Berne batted out their allotted 40, setting a target of 230.

After a delayed start due to the "Ruhezeit", Freiburg set to work with a required run rate of 5.75. And keep up with the run rate they did, except they lost wickets at regular intervals.
With the exception of Vijay (74) & Butt (10) no other batsman was to reach double figures.
When Vijay was caught by Aseem to dismiss Freiburg allout in 25.5 overs, Freiburg were still 101 runs short of the target.

The Flicx mat didn't offer much movement off the pitch and it didn't get up very high. So Freiburg Nomads will have to learn from Aseem, Berne's top scorer who hit 4 straight sixes, in order to avoid repeating five LBW dismissals in the future.
As for Berne, this was a great start to their 2016 CSPL campaign. But they relied heavily on one player today and will need to more focused against the stiffer opposition that is still to come.