It’s a good idea to organize a cricket tourney with the team comprising of 6 member ( I remember the Hong Kong Six’s) .I was part of this tourney , unfortunately for the second time I was replacing Bala, who as going to his native for some work, ( incidentally, I had to replace Anish in the 11 a side tourney as a 11th batsman ). The tourney had a record 27 teams and each team had a 5 male players along with a lady in the side. The format was very good with 8 ball per over and each batsman had to face all 8 balls with negative scoring for Out’s and extra runs for wide and no-balls.
Our 11 members’ original cricket team was split into two teams with Chandra leading my team and Praveen leading the other team. First match was on March 1st, my last day in Bangalore L&T Infotech (hopefully I will be back there after some time). Match started with our librarian renuka blasting the bowling all over the ground which followed by amith’s super cover drives, all of us contributed for the score with the score reaching more than 100 in 6 overs, our bowling destroyed the opponents with their score reaching mere 30 odd in 6 overs, it was a cake walk for us . The next match was scheduled after 2 weeks, as all of our team members were traveling back to their home towns. Meanwhile Praveen’s team got a bye to the next round.
On March 15th, the next match was held, that day was very sunny and ground was hard, again Chandra lost toss and we were allowed to bat. The team had a bad start with renuka scoring some 12 odd runs, again amith scored some runs, but it was less for us, Chandra, vinay, chidu and me chipped in with some runs and score reached above 100. Next our bowling clicked and the opponents score was in negative, it was a challenge for us and we again won the match with ease. Meanwhile Praveen’s team also won with some good performance by Anish and Praveen himself, star of the day was acdi with his all-round performance. I had to rush back to Mysore a s I was traveling to kolkatta the next day for the campus recruitment, with injury in my hand due to excessive diving it was very painful for me. On this day I got my fielding form back. I remembered my college days where I was very good at fielding (still I am, but body aches)
The next match (March 22nd) was very easy for us and Praveen’s team faced a tough challenge. After returning back from kolkatta, I had to rush back to Mysore and again to Bangalore for the match. The match saw renuka back in form and our star of the day was Bala with 26 runs and we scored 111 with some good backup runs by all except me ( I scored -9 ) and of course the EXTRAS. The field was green which suited me for my fielding. The bowling started and amazingly the opponents were run out 12 times with me involving in almost 10 run outs , good fielding and bowling saw our opponents struggle to score runs , Last ball of the match saw all the fielders moved to offside ( it was the repetition of Steve Waugh’s field). We were into semifinals at last. Unfortunately for Praveen’s team it was a very bad day with their team even though they were good , lost to Core logic’s team in the last over , all due to bad fielding and lack of spirit. On this day I got my fielding was good again my clothes was filled with mud color due to excessive diving).
Come the doom day ( march 29th ), we had to play 2 matches ( one match if we lost the semis) , we were determine d to go to the next round , the match was tough as the opponents had scored victory very convincingly in the previous round against core logic team. Again Chandra lost the toss and we had to bat, all things went horribly wrong as we were in deep trouble by the end of 3rd over with unnecessary out’s, then came the magic act of Bala with some good runs, I and Chandra stabilized the innings, but the score was very less to defend (45 runs) in 5 overs, Due to very heavy rains previous day, the field was horrible and all fielders were struggling to hold the ball. We grouped during the innings break, we had full confidence in us that we will be able to defend the score and we just needed to put 0 extras in the entire match. The first over was good with the opponents score reaching not more than 10 runs, and then came the magic arm of amith. He got the batsmen out 4 times with the score of the opponents plunging to negative we were back in the game. Good overs by Chandra, chidu and me saw the opponents to get 18 runs from last over (8 balls). Then came our joginder Sharma i.e. Bala; he bowled beautifully to make the batsmen to score only 10 runs and we won by 8 runs, it was a very close match for us, we made it for the finals. Support was there from the entire audience. Thanks to Praveen’s whistles along with Anish and adi. Sandesh had also come to see the match.
We were playing finals for the first time, all of us dressed in RED, this reminded of MANU’s colors. (All of us are MANU fans). Final was very tough as the opponents had a good bowling strength. Finally when our HR Manager , Rosaalee tossed the coin Chandra was lucky to win the toss , he made a wrong choice this time, he opted to chase , but it went horribly wrong as our batting failed with first 3 overs resulting in just 3 runs, time was very bad for us ,we were going down in a very bad manner. Some hope came after that with me Chandra and vinay chipping in with some runs. Our final score was 42 runs, that’s it very bad performance. Finally when our bowling started, we had lost all hopes but we were ready to give a fight, but in the over bowled by amith all went horribly wrong with the batsmen scoring some 20 odd runs making it easy for them to win the match , it was very hot and all of were tired ( even opponent team were struggling to run) , in the final over the I had to take 3 wickets with not allowing the batsman to score 3 runs, which was very tough, though I took a wicket , I was not able to prevent them from defending their score easily. At last we ended on the loosing side, not a problem it was very good performance that was given by us in the entire tourney with all of the team members scoring runs and getting wickets when it needed the most.
It was a good experience to play a cricket tourney like this. Also the ground was adjacent to the HAL airport’s compound. I had a chance to take some good snaps of Aircraft photos notably British Airways and Singapore airways. Also some good videos of Plane landing and take off, not to forget bala’s commentary. Thanks to Arun gaikwad and his team who organized this tourney in a very good and professional way. (Unluckily this Mysore office won’t do such things all are just more focused on sitting in office for more than 10 hours a day and objecting what people do in a professional way , sadly I miss Bangalore office a lot , I am hoping to get back to Bangalore in a short time , hope all the CTP mangers’ listen to this.) Day ended with a good treat by Chandra. (It was a surprising one) for us. Photos are with this post.
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