Practice game Vs. Hunters July 18, 2009

All the games for the weekend of July 18-19 were postponed by WCL because of the Eastern National tournament that took place in the Washington DC Metropolitan area from July 17th - July 19th. Srini contacted Hunters and scheduled a friendly game at Reston on July 18. Its was a 30 over game and Himalayans batted first.

Sher and Ananth opened the innings and Saurabh made his debut as an “Umpire”J. The openers put on a steady partnership with Sher playing some handsome shots particularly a pull shot that would have made Navjot Singh Siddhu say : That’s the famous Kris Srikanth “Natraja Shot”. Sher was dismissed by a very good catch in the slips by the Hunters skipper. Our progress was steady with Vikrant and Ananth who put on a good stand before Vikrant getting bowled. Next in was Suresh carrying his big hitting form from the last practice game. Everyone was excited to see some big shots and fireworks from Suresh but he was out the first ball. Jana went in next to join Ananth; who was batting beautifully. But with both getting dismissed in quick succession put a brake on our scoring and at the mid innings break we were 60 / 5. After the break Preetham , Saurabh and Tipu added quick runs. The partnership between Preetham and Tipu was a crucial one where they scored quickly without taking too much risk and Himalayans’ ended with 179/8 in 30 overs. The two top scorers were Ananth (44) and Preetham (36*). After a quick snack break, a much needed one for the team and especially Tipu J, we took to the field. We had only 10 players on filed. Hunters’ first wicket was accounted for by Venkat Chari (new player) and a brilliant catch by Sher. I believe he has topped Srujiths’ catch vs. Omnitech. Our bowling was consistent and we kept the pressure on bowling tight line and length. Sher and Preetham bowled an excellent spell in tandem keeping the batsmen quiet. Preetham was in his purple zone and picked up 3 key wickets, especially a classic in swinger that castled the batsman and uprooted the middle stump. Hunters showed some good fight with their opener Sudeep scoring a well compiled fifty with some good support from lower order batsmen.

Our every game has some funny incident and this game was no different. Before Hunters batting innings we showed them the ball (BDM) we wanted to use and they were good with it. But midway through the Hunters’ batting innings, they asked us to change the ball because they felt it was BREAKING their bats !!!! This was probably the most bizarre and absurd excuse ever given to get a ball changed. We did not agree to that request and carried on the game.

With 47 needed from the last 5 overs Suresh got back Preetham and he took 2 more wickets to make sure that Hunters would have to play exceptional cricket to win. This was his first 5 wicket haul and a true match winning performance. In the end Hunters fell short by 10 runs. We had only nine fielders on the field and sometimes we got over excited with some misfields and over throws. This is something we need to work on as a team. After two weeks of good, fun cricket its time for us to focus back on the league with out game next Saturday, July 25th against Star. Let’s put the practice & plan into execution and win one more. Go team.