CCL 2023 Match 3: How Akhil Akkineni's stellar show handed Telugu Warriors their maiden win

The latest edition of the Celebrity Cricket League is in full swing with the first days of the tournament already dishing out great entertainment for the fans. The opening day of the league, February 18th, saw the Karnataka Bulldozers kick things off with the game against the Bengal Tigers and score their maiden victory. The Bulldozers edged out the Tigers with an 8-wicket win with Golden Star Ganesh, skipper Pradeep Bogadi and others putting on good performances.

The same day featured another game in the form of Chennai Rhinos v/s Mumbai Warriors with the former team defeating the Warriors comfortably with 10 wickets in hand and 7 overs to spare.

The Day 2 of CCL 2023, too, offered two back-to-back games with the Telugu Warriors competing against Kerala Strikers for the first game (Match #3) of the day. The Warriors from the Telugu Film Industry boasted many talented cricketers like Akhil Akkineni, Sachin Joshi, Nanda Kishore, Prince, Sudheer Babu, and others. Opting to bat first, the Telugu Warriors put on a whopping 154 runs at the loss of only two wickets in their first innings which spanned 10 overs. Akhil, the mainstay of the team for quite some time, scored a stellar 91 from only 30 deliveries with his opening partner Prince scoring 45 from 30 deliveries.

From the Kerala Strikers, Malikappuram star Unni Mukundan took charge of the bowling but gave away 45 runs in his quota of 4 overs. The other bowlers involved for the strikers were Vinu Mohan, Shafeeq Rahman, Vivek Gopan and Arjun Nandakumar.

In their first batting innings, the Kerala Strikers could only muster up 98 runs at the loss of 5 wickets with Rajeev Pillai and Siddharth Menon ending as the top scorers with 38 and 27 runs, respectively. With a huge deficit of 56 runs, the strikers were fast approaching defeat with an extraordinary performance warranted from them in the second innings.

But that wasn't to be as the Telugu Warriors scored 119 runs in their second quota of 10 overs with Akhil, once again, scoring a half-century and putting his team in a rather comfortable position. And in response, needing 170 runs to win the game, the Kerala Strikers could only manage 105 for 6 to hand a 64-run victory to the Warriors from the Tollywood.