My Best Cricket Seasons!!!

Now that I'm back in India and my US season has come to an end, I thought of putting together my stats. This was more my way of re-visiting the best cricketing moments of the last two years.

2005 season:

My first match: A decent start but unfortunately run out. Bright spot was that we managed to win our first game. This team FoursNSixes was what became my 2006 Team (UCC). A merger of sorts of COSARC and FoursNSixes.

My first Fifty: COBCA was one of the top teams in the league and the eventual 2006 Champions. So to score a fifty against them and especially when the team was down and out at 30/6 odd was a real nice feeling. Even though we fell short that day, at one point when we were looking at about 60 in six overs, we actually went all out for a victory and we could see that the opposition was panicking.

Other 2005 games: Although every game was memorable, the other unforgettable game is the game against Akron in the 20/20 Tournament where I had the ankle injury that rendered me hors'de'kombat for a good two months. Chasing a score of 190 odd, powered by a Quick Fire knock by our captain Vishal and a good 40 odd by yours truly, we were well on our way to victory when a mini collapse left us in a situation where with five overs to go, we had about 30 runs to get but we'd lost all our wickets. This was on one of the hottest days of the season and end of the game, virtually every person in our team was injured in some way or the other. Unfortunately, scores of these mini-tournaments are not on the www.

2006 Season:

Game against KCC: This was my first big innings of the tournament when people in my new team first recognized my talent. Before that I'd done pretty ok in practice but in practice pretty much everyone is a big hitter in our team. So that doesn't count for much. The sad part is that we couldn't convert this into a victory due to several dropped catches and missed run outs.

Game against UC: This was a do or die match for us. A loss here would have meant that we were out of the tournament. It was the same for our opponents too. And this being an away game made it tougher for us. Getting up at 7 in the morning, driving two hours to Cincinnati, playing in a new ground - the odds were against us. A superb batting performance despite a slow start took us to 231, our highest score for the season. The last 16 overs after I went into bat, we made 160 runs - some amazing hitting. We almost squandered the advantage by our poor bowling and fielding - but a last over run out got us the game by 7 runs and we were into the next round.

Game of the Season This was the game against last year's losing finalists. We were very much the underdogs. We did well to restrict them to 180 although we could have kept them down to lower. When I went into bat, we still needed about 80 odd runs at run a ball. We did well to keep the score board ticking and kept us in the game. A rush of blood and I was out with about 15 to win of 21 balls and 4-5 wickets in hand. My wickets was followed by two quick wickets and everyone started panicking. Were we going to lose this one after doing so well? Eight to win off the last over and a first ball six by Subodh sealed the match!!! Wild celebrations followed. We partied hard long into the night celebrating this wonderful victory.

Last game of season Another do or die battle but this time we fell short. An away game where we went in two bowlers short and paid dearly for it. 258 runs in 35 overs is virtually unachievable. At one point with me and Chandru (Prasad) going great guns we were very much in the game. But with him going out to a loose shot and the next 2-3 overs going for next to nothing, the asking rate went upto about 12 and became virtually impossible. I played with a runner after my second Ankle injury (Both seasons, injured myself in the last game of the season ... luckily) and did pretty ok. I fell to one tired awful slog and with that went the game and our chances of making it to the semis.

All in all, had an amazing time playing cricket. Thank you Midwest Cricket League for giving me this opportunity. Will try and come back some point in the future. :-)