Strategising over a cup of coffee

Well as we had decided in the six week long break we needed to come up with some good strategies about where we were lacking and the general plan on our preparedness. With the relatively low work pressure on account of the Christmas and New Year week we had some time to quickly have a small team meet on our strategies. We met in the break room over a cup of coffee.
Kaptaan sahab was back from his marriage and a month long India trip. He was initially talking abt going in the semi-retirement mode but it was hardly a week and when we discussed with him what he had missed over a month the itch made its way back and he quickly turned into cricket mode. He was present for the practice match with Apollo just in his first week-end back. With his comeback, however, came back his re-renewed desire to go up the order - even though theres really no room there. Up the order would mean disturbing the intact working upper order. We are thinking of offering him any spot between 1 to 6 except 1,2,3,4,5,6 since they are already occupied ;-). The batting order was- in the sequence- Omair and Sam as openers followed by Ganesh, then Rajender, followed by Vivek or Bosco, followed by Sukrit. Which meant the next available slot was no 7 which in fact was one lower than his initial order. And it seemed it didn't matter that no 7 was actually lower order at least as long as it was single digited!!!

Sukrit was thinking of ordering 2 dozen practice balls - which I thought were enough for next 4 leagues considering the (ir)regularity of our regular(?) practice sessions. While we already had 7 balls left of the previous dozen - which I thought were enough to outlive the LB guys life here. An extra dozen balls I thought were enough to outlive even the Ness guys (considering how fast the preferred vendor changes)and the 2 dozen would live to see the day of exit of the next vendor.

One interesting futuristic thought evolving out of this was how would the team be when we would have been using last remaining of the 2 dozen balls. Sukrit would be part of the league organisers(anyone can guess seeing his enthu and that the organizers are often looking out for guys who take initiatives) while Keshav will still be replying to mails from his iPhone (iPhone8G that is). While Saurabh still realising his dream of moving up the order finally reaching 6, since the Wipro guy at no. 6 was flying back since his knowledge transition to the new Cognizant guy would have been over.

We also decided to order wicket keepers gloves. In the league matches the lack of gloves meant we always were looked down upon as the poorer cousins, who somehow make it and cant afford a kit. The keepers gloves seem to make a team look professional. Atleast our "looks" are professional if not our game. Borrowing from other teams was our Shaan ke Khilaaf. And also against our theory that the keeper doesn't really need a glove to catch/stop a tennis ball. Although the real reason was that we were on a tight budget. Also the lack of gloves made us feel like Milkha Singh -one who has talent and will fight, run and win - shoe or no shoe.

We also decided for the twenty-seventh time this season that we need to practise more. The twenty-sixth such plan for which I had contributed by writing an inspirational mail to the team about the importance of practice had went for a toss because I was watching Avatar in IMax-3D at Harkins Theatre exactly at the same moment as the planned execution time of that plan.

Equations in the league seem to have changed in the past few days with some of the minnows causing upsets by defeating teams at the top of the table and so our path to the knock-outs is now more harder. We now have to defeat not only these so-called under-dogs but also a couple of the top teams to comfortably reach the quarters. We have our next league match next week-end with the Stragglers - the only winless team in the tournament so far and no wonder they are at the bottom of the table. Considering our last win was also against the then bottom-of-the-league team we have hopes, but the only cause for worry is that we are going in this match with absolutely no match practice just hoping they don't do to us what Zimbabwe and Bangladesh did to India in the 99 and 2007 World Cups respectively.