Phoenix CC Shobhit Gupta c & b Garbutt 16 Sameer b Rheddy 0 Aneyas Moghe + c Sandeep b Singh 2 Ranjit Kumar c Bhattacharya b Singh 4 Benjamin Lebor * run out 0 John Shute b Bhattacharya 11 Robin Sperling c Sandeep b Bhattacharya 23 John Marshall st Sandeep b Pant 0 Michael Chapman not out 9 Vijay Sharma b Bhattacharya 0 Amit Raj run out 2 Extras 7nb 21w 8b 2lb 38 Total 21.3 overs all out 105

Genpact won by 78 runs

Despite struggling - as they unfortunately have done all season - to put together a whole team, and needing not for the first time to borrow a couple of guest players even to manage to field ten men this weekend, the class of Genpact's core players showed through in a comfortable victory over Phoenix.

Winning the toss, Phoenix skipper Benjamin Lebor opted to put Genpact in to bat on a sweltering midday pitch at Dunabogdany (with temperatures measured as high as 34 degrees Celsius during the day). Though Phoenix made early inroads thanks to Amit Raj removing the Genpact openers cheaply, a productive partnership between Genpact skipper Ashok Bhattacharya and veteran Preminder Singh steadied the ship nicely before both were removed lbw in the upper teens. Nitin Pant, however, proved a steady anchor of the innings, and eventually carded a well-deserved unbeaten half-century, aided by a solid 23 from Martin Dunstone. And although the Genpact tail disappointingly failed to add many runs to the score, the visitors were helped considerably by some very wayward bowling from the home side, who conceded an innings-topping 60 in extras (no less than a third of the total Genpact score!) - profligacy that was to prove most costly in the final analysis. 

Pick of the Phoenix bowling attack was without question John Marshall, who while spraying it about a bit at times and contributing his fair share of the dreaded extras count, did manage to mop up the tail efficiently and chalk up an excellent and well-deserved five-wicket haul. His is a promising talent for the future if he can rein in his aggression somewhat and perhaps sacrifice a yard or two of pace for the sake of greater accuracy. Amit, too, showed promise at the start in picking up the wickets of both Genpact openers, but again he needs some work in the nets or gym over the winter to hone his line and length.

Looking at a target of 184 to win, Phoenix knew they were up against it and skipper Lebor duly packed his top order with big hitters. It was a gamble that sadly did not pay off for him on this occasion, as four of the home side's top five fell cheaply to rash strokes and - in the case of the unfortunate and evidently tired Lebor - a somewhat senseless run-out. Only Shobhit Gupta resisted for a time among the top order, but once he had fallen for a creditable 16, the result - despite a solid rearguard action from top-scorer Robin Sperling, assisted by John Shute - was never really in doubt.

Pick of Genpact's bowling attack was the accurate and consistent skipper Ashok, completing a good all-round performance of 19 runs, 3 wickets and a solid catch at deep forward square leg (nice field placement!). Preminder Singh, too, picked up a couple of wickets early on with his seemingly innocuous dobbers, by tempting the batters into slogs - another canny bit of captaincy on Ashok's part.

It should be said that at times the heat took its toll on tempers somewhat, and led to one or two verbal exchanges in the heat of the moment that might best have gone unsaid, and might well have had other teams been willing to send neutral umpires. Nevertheless, suitably gentlemanly congratulations were exchanged at the end, by and large it was a fairly fought contest, and certainly no one would dispute that Genpact were worthy winners. And Phoenix, for their part, will go away knowing that they need to work on the accuracy of their bowling and keep those extras down!

Man of the match: Nitin Pant