Terminator 6: Rise of the Bulls

Cricket they say is a game of great contradictions. Imagine this - last week we played against the "bottom" team, with our "strongest" line-up, "won the toss" and then "lost" a "one-sided" match. Today we played one of the "top" team in the league, with a "depleted" line-up, "lost the toss" and then actually "won" a "close" match. The silence in the camp after we saw the last ball sail past the boundary in the last match was replaced with cries so loud we almost have a hoarse voice now. The contradiction was complete.

We also had a new set of heroes. Bosco got the first five-for by anyone in our team. He would have got more since he still had an over in his quota left but Sukrit cleaned it up from the other end and so our opponents actually ran out of wickets. While in batting it was the perfect mix of immaculate patience and controlled aggression displayed by Keshav that ensured we made light work of the small target and sailed though with five wickets to spare.

Our fielding was exceptional and in fact I would say it was the fact that we grabbed all the important catches that came our way that we could bundle the Terminators that cheap.

One of the highlights of the match though according to me was the Appeal-of-the-Century by Sukrit followed by the heart-attack routine that he did. It exemplifies the fact that his passion for the game is simply unmatched. He it seems was also appealing for everyone since the other close-in fielders prefer to zip their lips while fielding. Other teams are more vocal because that keeps the pressure on the batsmen and also the umpires while motivating the bowlers.

Before this match , which was the 6th for us, we had just one win while the Terminators had just one loss in 6 matches. So we are 6-2-4 now. Thats 6 matches 2 wins and 4 losses. And still hoping to make the play-offs. While we wont want to get carried away too much with the win theres no harm in enjoying our moment under the sun.

Strangled by the Stragglers

How bad can a bad day possibly be. What can be worser than worse. What is the significance of "worst" when comparing bad-worse-worst.

You have a match against the bottom-of-the-table team in the tournament. You gaze through their records so far in the league and come to know why they are last. The only winless team in the tournament after 4 matches. A team whose so called top bowler and top batsman was the same person and whose record with the ball and bat was 6 wickets and 40 runs respectively from 4 matches. You come to the ground and see that this best player is absent against you. You see them play for the first few moments and realize that theres no doubt that they are really the weakest team to play in the league. You field your best possible lineup with good strong batting till no 9. You plan to not only win but win by a good margin so as to improve your Net run rate. You plan to raise a high score and then get them out real cheap. Luck seems to be on your side as you win the toss and elect to bat which is what you wanted to execute the abovesaid plan.

And then theres the nightmare. But wait a minute, I remember using this word 'nightmare' for what happened against the Rodeos(where although a loss was expected anyway). So what should you call this? Well - a 'worst' nightmare.

What can you call a loss when you lose to the worst team in the league with your strongest-possible-team-combination-ever by a huge run-rate margin which is going to hurt an already worst net run rate. When the highest scorer in your team made 5 runs and the team total of 59(which again was amongst the lowest scores in the league) was contributable to the generosity showed by the opposition bowlers who bowled 42 extras. Hoping to win with 59 runs on the board was never going to be easy. When the Stragglers came to bat, their batsmen's quality was quickly evident and gave proof as to why they languished at the bottom. But the same pitch which behaved awkwardly when we were batting was somehow playable for even batsmen of their quality.

Nothing could go right and finally when the scores were tied there was the proverbial final nail in the coffin. What worse way to end a match when a no 7 batsman whose stance looked like he may not have held a bat ever earlier finished it off by hitting a monster six with the scores leveled to maximise the gap between our scores to hurt the NRR in the maximum possible worst way. Sigh!!!!!! It seemed God was intent to teach us a lesson or two in superlative adjectives usage (with example) and the real meaning of the word "worst". And boy did we learn. We didn't just learn it - we lived it.

While we were batting, with the wickets falling it was natural for a few of our batsmen to see a silverlining even in that- it was there chance to realize that dream of being the team savior and score some runs. But every single dream "had" to end in a nightmare today. Yours truly got caught in the deep while hitting the first scoring shot out of the ground having eulogized the virtues of patience many times over in team meetings and scored only 5 runs less than the top scorer Omair - who scored 5. Rajender must have wanted to prove that the only thing common between him and Sehwag is not only the last five alphabets of their first names. But the chance went down the drain with a bad umpiring decision. Venkat wanting to give batting lessons to the batsmen on how to bat had to wrapup his coaching after a couple of runs when one of the bowlers gate-crashed his class. Saurabh moving up-the-order was in the middle order and waited 9 balls to open his account but the bowler didnt want him to and succeeded in that. Bosco started with a four but unfortunately that were the only runs that he made before returning to cool his heals. Sukrit I thought realised that it was time to play carefully and he did play carefully the only ball he faced directly to the silly-point fielders hand. Pratap and Srinivas V must have wanted a dream debut but the bowlers had other ideas.

I remember international commentators often using the phrase "scorecard-resembling-a-phone-number". That always seemed to be an over-enthusiastic, exaggregating, decorative phrase to me rather than something realistic. I would never ever forget in my life why that phrase was devised for we again lived it today. Our scorecard today was 5101031402 - which was the runs scored by batsman from no 1 to 10 in that sequence. To ensure how come God has again taken so much effort to make us realize the meaning of even this phrase I actually searched the internet to find whether this is a real phone number and found that it indeed is one from San Jose California(510 being the area code there). God had marked-up two phrases for our class today. And the proof was there.

The Stragglers who were supposed to be Strugglers came up as our Stranglers. Our journey in the league started with hope and then there were heartburns, empty-feelings and then hopelessness along the way. The feeling today,if there is any, is beyond hope and beyond hopelessness. Its like when you are repeatedly hit you become numb and it doesn't feel anything anymore. Earlier there was despair after a loss but now its business as usual. We've started getting used to it. Importance of Practice appeals, Inspiratory mails, Calls for fight are all gone now, and with it - hope . What remains is a feeling beyond hopelessness.