Inner Circle beat Vitality 2-0 in their BLAST Open Porto Group B opening match on August 27, taking Anubis 13-8 and Cache 16-13 in overtime, HLTV reports. The win carried Inner Circle on through the upper bracket and sent Vitality into the lower bracket.
The series was Justinas "jL" Lekavicius's first match as a stand-in for Vitality. He came in for William "mezii" Merriman in Porto, and HLTV reported that the stint would extend past the BLAST event to PGL Masters Bucharest, where he is set to substitute for Dan "apEX" Madesclaire.
A one-sided Anubis
Inner Circle opened confidently on their own Anubis pick, running to a 7-1 lead on the attack before Vitality narrowed the deficit to two by the switch. The Ukrainian side then won five of the first six rounds after the half to reach map point, and converted three rounds later to close it out 13-8.
Arseniy "cptkurtka023" Derevinskiy led the way with a 1.64 rating and was named player of the match.
It was our prime game. We did everything very good.
A collapse on Cache
Cache, Vitality's pick, started the same way in reverse. Vitality took the first six rounds on the attack before Inner Circle answered with a six-round streak of their own to leave the half level. Vitality then won six of the first seven rounds on the CT side to reach map point at 12-7, but Inner Circle chipped the lead away a round at a time to force 12-12.
Two quick entries onto the A site from Eduard "zeRRoFIX" Petrovskyi put Inner Circle ahead immediately in the extra rounds. They took two of three in the first half of overtime and ended the map on the defence, 16-13.
Mathieu "ZywOo" Herbaut had the slowest start to a match of his CS2 career, going 0-7 on Anubis. He struggled throughout and finished bottom of the scoreboard with a 0.78 rating, his second-worst-rated series in CS2.