The Summer 2006

Before starting to write about my summer' 2006, I must say that it is Sunil and Praveen's blog that has really inspired me to write something. But still writting about the summer in the end of September shows my laziness. Anyway now that I'm somehow managing to write here, I should start writting why the summer 2006 is really special for me. To start with, in the beginning last summer was really scary as I had to take my PhD prelims. Then there was the regular ISA Cricket tournaments. So, the main concern in the beginning was time. Whether I would be able to manage time with lab, cricket in the afternoon and study for the prelims. So, we started with the Fun cricket tournament and on paper everyone thought ours is the best team to win the tournament. To be honest, we felt we are good, but a couple of other teams are also not bad and at least 3 teams have equal chance of winning. But we managed to loose a match in the qualifying round against my roommates' team and that loss actually brought us back into senses that we should take our opponents seriously. Till then we were always kidding around in the field. So, we took the tournament seriously, had a kind of first proper team discussion and managed to beat others and move to the final. Now again in the final our opposition was Mazhar's team ( The only team we lost to in the league stage). So, this time we were fully prepared and had a proper plan to execute. Luckily even after loosing the toss we were asked to bat as we would have preferred. And we got the best start against the strong team. We had discussed that around 50 runs is competitive and 60 is definitely in the safer side. And to our surprise we scored 70 runs in the stipulated 6 overs and not a single wicket was lost. Everyone clicked and I was not even required to bat. Sumit who was the opener with Sanket came back not out at the end of 6 overs facing only 7 balls (The tournamnet rule allows you to play only 12 balls). This speaks volumes of our good luck that day. So, after having 70 runs on the board both we and our opponents were convinced that it's an one sided affair and there is no chance for them with the kind of bowling we have. And that is exactly what happened and I felt the opposition gave up even before the start. We were hugely relieved to learn that we managed to do justice to our pre-tournamnet favorite tag and came out as champions with flying colors. We had a very good crowd by Manhattan ISA standards for the final match even at the scorching heat of about 95 F. The victory was sweeter for the fact that we did not have a single supporter in the crowd and they were pin drop silent right from the beginning as our batsmen and bowlers never gave them a chance to open their mouth. Although we would have liked a little more sound!!!!!!

To be continued...........