First win of the season

May 5, 2008 at 12:23 am | Posted in Cricket | Leave a comment

Today we won our first cricket match of the season. It was a refreshing change to see happy faces from our team members at the end of the match. Not quite used to seeing this 🙂 

We played against West Chester today. They won the toss and elected to bat first. Balbir and Rajdeep started proceedings for us. Weather was conducive for seam bowling and Balbir made most of it by bowling sharp inswinging deliveries. He bowled 6 overs at a stretch and was not lucky enough to get more than one wicket. 

Despite a good start, we started to give it away once Balbir was out of the attack. At drinks break, WCCC was comfortably paced at 73/1 in 15 overs. After the drinks break Bhanu (the cap) comes to me and asks me to bowl. Since I was very comfortable with Bhanu, I told him I would not bowl from the end he was asking me to bowl from but rather bowl from the other end. He obliged and I bowled my overs from the end I wanted to bowl from. Started very poorly. Couple of short balls down the leg side, but lucky enough to get a wicket of my second legitimate delivery. That ball was short and outside the legstump (yes, it was outside leg) and the batsman choose to hit straight down to the fielder at fine leg. Raj P at fine leg didn’t make no mistake. Finished that over with couple more bad deliveries. Ravi was bowling at the other end and he took a wicket in the next over. After Ravi’s over, I was walking to the stumps to bowl. An interesting thing happened. Bhanu wanted to give bowling to someone else but Balbir insisted that I bowl. That’s how I got my second over and most importantly this was the decision that turned the match in our favor. My second over was really good and I started to get the drift and turn. Once I get the drift and turn, I ama completely different bowler. After my second over, spin was introduced at the other end. Anand bowled well at the other end and kept things tight. At one stage WC was 121/3 and then slumped to 126/8 in a span of 2 overs. Mayur took a good catch running towards point (colliding with Rajdeep who didnt hear Mayur’s call for the catch) and a sharp stumping in my third over. I ended up bowling my quota of overs for 4 wickets. Anand got two. Rajdeep came for a final spell and boy he did fire it in in his last two overs. He was unlucky not to get a wicket but what was heartening was to see him give 120% even in the final over of the match. 

In the end WC scored a competitive 159 in 30 overs for the loss of 9 wickets. I got 4, Anand got 2, Ravi and Balbir took 1 wicket each. Balbir and Raj P went out to open our innings and they gave us a good start of around 20 odd runs for the first wicket. I did umpiring along with Mukund HD for the first 15 overs. Raj pandya got out to a in cutter as he poked his bat at one that was coming in sharply. First slip gladly accepted the sitter. Faisal Khan walked out into the middle. He is a new player for our team and the first or second ball he faced there was a loud appeal for caught behind from all the WC players. I was the umpire and I ruled not out. To me it looked like bat hitting the pad and pad hitting the ball. WC players were quite confident that they got an edge. If there was an edge, the batsman should have walked away (according to me, that is). I am quite convinced that there was no edge. (I spoke to the batsman during the break and he said there was no edge.) WC players were clearly unhappy about the decision and kept on ranting about it the whole match. To add salt to the wound, Faisal scored a brisk 42. He clubbed all the WC bowlers all over the park. On the other end, Balbir was seeing the ball like a football and he started treating WC bowlers with disdain. At drinks break, we were 66/1 after 15 overs needing 94 more from 15 overs. Within 4 overs the equation has changed. After 19, we were 113/1. Whopping 47 runs in 4 overs!!! Balbir brought up his half century during this carnage. Faisal was unlucky not to score a fifty. He played one shot too many and paid the price. After Faisal got out, Balbir took charge and finished things for us. In the end, it was a comfortable victory with more than 3 overs to spare and 7 wickets in hand. Balbir scored an unbeaten 84 and was duly adjudged the man of the match.