Saturday, February 12, 2011

Sunday morning... wake up with Cricket

The sky was clear and the sun shone brightly... twenty four youngsters assembled together early today morning on the dusty gymkhana cricket field to test their mettle.
My hostel room was a cozy place, so by the time I was ready and reached the field our team had almost finished with a some bit of hard hitting with the bat. In my absence(favourably) we won the toss and decided to bat.

Dheeraj and Prahallad at the crease
As I was parking my bicycle I saw Prahallad getting caught out... but lucky for him and the rest of the team, it was a no- ball. At that time Prahallad and Dheeraj were at the crease and we saw some wonderful shots, with good use of power. The funny part was that we sought Santanu's services for the last ball of the innings and unfortunately he was at the runners end ;-)... Nonetheless he started our bowling attack with a wide ball, which, I assume was a deliberate good luck charm.
We put up a target of 94 runs in 12 overs... which is pretty formidable and the opponents dismal performance with the bat reaffirmed the fact.

In my opinion except for a few mis-fields, the field placement was excellent and the team seemed to gell pretty well. All the bowlers had one wicket to their credit with Arpan bagging two. Shubhamouy was the first to actually get somebody bowled, middle wicket!!!. Santanu, Dheeraj, Manoj, Arpan, Ramiz and Vikram did an excellent job with the ball. The fielding to was pretty tight with Prahallad, on the covers, saving quite a few shots and Sayan adding his part of experise. Tapan did a great job as the wicket-keeper,  Bapaditya made his presence felt when he replaced Shyam in the 7th over.
Captains briefing

As the game progressed the opponents realized that they were losing so there was this guy... who would call out for two runs even when one was not possible. We played against the 'Centre for atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences' - CAOS for short. They did stand up to their acronym, as towards the end there was just so much 'Chaos' between the wickets ;-).

The team was in great form... with everybody doing their bit to contribute to a spectacular finish. I had carried my copy of Hardy's ' A Mathematician's apology', just in case it got boring... but I was so engrossed in the match that at one point did not know where my bag was...
The team
 
There were very few spectators, a majority of the ladies were involved in the Saraswati puja I guesss( and hence their absence). Given the final outcome, the goddess of knowledge definitely seemed pleased with the fact that the math researchers were playing  ... She must have said  "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" .



7 comments:

Azi said...

Hey, nice bit of humor with the "chaos between wickets" phrase. CAOS did hit one six, we should give them credit for that.
-Eliza

Jonathan Fernandes said...

thanks... Yeah agreed... the 'chaos' part was for the fact when they were running so madly between the wickets during the last two over... With all due respect they were good opponents with amazing team spirit.

Dheeraj said...

Enjoyed the article.

Jonathan Fernandes said...

Thanks man... :-)

Unknown said...
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Amita said...
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Unknown said...

thanks for keeping the absentees like us updated... :) and yeah, liked the Mathematician's Apology bit, felt nice to know that u carry it around with u but don't realize where the bag is...:P