CS-10 XI routs Waverly Dads XI: Scorecard

CS-10 XI routs Waverly Dads XI

Peter Roebuck once wrote that out of form batsmen can pray harder for rains than farmers weary of the drought. Suffice it to say that the prayers of many such batsmen suffering run droughts were answered last weekend in Victoria. The sad casualty of the plentiful rains was the much awaited grudge match against Waverly Dads. On a positive note, the rains allowed a shift in the venue of the match from Wantirna South – which for many cricket enthusiasts involved travel times longer than their vacations – to the more approachable Fawkner Park in the city.

False start of the year
As the team assembled, we were given the news that one of our draft picks for this match, Jagannath Raju, would not join us for the match today. Jag was later contacted and had this to say:”I was so keen for the match that I turned up yesterday morning. Not finding any of my teammates in the ground, I left disappointed and did not turn up for the match today. Today, I am working since it is Monday. Funnily, I don’t see anyone in my IBM office. Not sure why everyone has taken the day off.”

Sanjay Bhansali was summoned with an SoS to fill in for Jag.

Sanjay graciously arrived at the ground quick-time in his Superman suit and saved our team for the day.

Warm start for the day

The home team contingent trickled in from 8:30AM. Venkat Rao, the new recruit for the team was drafted into assisting with the dreaded ‘warm-up and nets sessions’, more commonly known as I-didn’t-know-that-part-of-my-body-existed sessions.

Venkat – whose possessions include a seaming rearing delivery, and a bat used and gifted to him by Rahul Dravid in his pomp – was heard to remark “I found the professionalism and organisation of the whole team, especially Soundar’s task list, quite impressive. Although it must be said that many of us are clearly more unfit than Adnan Sami on a diet of Malai Lassi and Amritsari Naan.”


Match details
Batting first
Ravi, our skipper, kicked off the match on the right note by winning the toss and electing to bat. In went Soundar and Rajesh to open the batting to give us a strong start. Rajesh smashed a four and a six for his breezy 17 while Soundar held up the other end with his technically correct shots.
Rajesh’s skier to a fielder in the deep brought in Krishna to the crease. The next few overs left the opposition reeling in the same frame of mind as the England team after Sehwag’s 68 ball 83 blitzkrieg last week. Krishna launched a frightening assault on the opposition bowlers with three fours and three sixes. Rajesh Patil, the umpire at the time, eventually got tired of craning his neck constantly to watch ball after ball sail over his head, and eventually brought Krishna’s innings to an end by declaring him out LBW.

Meanwhile, Sharad joined in the fun with a quickfire 13 with three boundaries as well. All this enabled us to get to the tune of 90-3 kind of score by the 15-over drinks break.

At this point, it should be mentioned that deciphering the scorecard for providing a match update was tougher than solving a Boolean algebra problem owing to some curious scoring techniques and maths adopted by scorers on both sides. Continuing with the match update…a flurry of wickets caused a late order collapse, but our score was given some respectability by Arvind Joshi at no. 10 with a combination of a four, a six to the cow corner, and some sprightly running between the wickets. To their credit, our opposition worked hard to ensure that their contribution of 32 extras was the next highest score on our sheet after Krishna’s individual top score of 40. The final official score for our team was 164 in 28.3 overs. Given the small boundaries of CS-10 ground, this looked like an inadequate score.


The chase
The openers for Dad’s XI strolled to the crease fresh with the confidence of their last successful run chase against us. However, the first couple of overs gave them an indication of what was to follow for the next seven. A wide was the only run off Rajesh’s first over, while Venkat’s first over yielded no runs. Their combined spell of nine overs mostly consisted of accurately aimed deliveries whizzing past the ears, bats and shoulders of the batsmen with a persistence that even flies in the Melbourne summer would not match. This searing spell from the duo which included a wicket for Venkat in his first match for our team softened the Dad’s XI sufficiently for Arvind to clean up two wickets in his first over for our team. Amar also snared two quick wickets in an economical spell.

Mention must be made of some expert work that Gopi was putting to develop shine on one side of the ball after every delivery. Gopi has indicated that his upcoming autobiography will include the details of the mint he uses for the shine. He has indicated that he does not prefer the Murray mints preferred by Trescothick and uses an Indian brand which he will soon endorse.

By drinks break, the Dad’s XI were somewhere near 64-5 at the halfway mark and our team was oozing with confidence about an impending win.

However, Sharad cautioned us from being over optimistic after his experiences of having seen our team snatch a few defeats from the jaws of victory. True to form, the Dad’s XI rung in a partnership between Ajay and Jerry which looked threatening. They struck a few boundaries and ran hard between the wickets. The score resembled 100-5 at around 20 overs, leaving them with a target of 65 runs off 60 balls with 5 wickets in hand.

Ravi then turned to his chief weapons of the day - Rajesh and Venkat. The stifling pincer attack soon had its effect. The match reached its turning point when Gopi took blinder of a catch at short mid-off from Jerry off Rajesh. Rajesh then took another wicket of a the next delivery and the field was brought to give him a go at a hatrick. The hatrick was nearly pulled off when Krishna dived hard to take a stiff chance, but it was not to be. Later, whispers were heard about Krishna mentioning payback for the LBW he got. Rajesh yet had his next wicket with a smart catch by Venkat in first slip. Some dubious umpiring from the Dad’s XI – especially involving previously unknown interpretations of the LBW rule – prolonged the stay of their batsmen at the crease.

With two wickets still left, Arvind continued his dream debut and picked up his third wicket for the match.

By this stage anything that moved 5mm away from the off stump and .05mm away from the leg stump was given a wide by the umpire so the Dad’s XI still had every chance of taking the match away from us.

Ravi now desperately looked for a bowler who could get the ball straight to the stumps. Given that Ravi and Rajesh had used up their six overs, Ravi asked Soundar to take his pads and gloves off and have a trundle.

He needed all of three deliveries to seal the deal and bowl out the persistent Ajay.
Rampant unruly celebrations followed and Rajesh - who would be my nominee for man of the match with his batting, bowling and two catches - rushed forward to grab a stump as a souvenir. He was later asked to return the stump to the kit bag.

Doping controversy dogs match
Given the bowling attack of the Waverly Dads XI, some of the shots from our batting stalwarts went higher than Ben Cousins on Speed. The opposition captain, Jerry, noticed our players swilling some of Ravi’s heady masala chai in the sheds before coming out to bat.

Jerry later issued a statement that said “We have lodged an official complaint with the ICC asking for Ravi’s chai to be tested by the WADA and to list it as a banned performance enhancing substance. Our suspicions about the legality of the brew arose when we heard that Shane Warne, Mohammed Asif and Shoaib Akhtar are in advanced negotiations to get the recipe for the chai from Mrs. Mendiratta.”

Bouquets and brickbats

• Altogether, the fielding was terrific with all catches on offer being taken except for one by your correspondent.
• The obvious area for improvement is the wides. Some deliveries were directed at imaginary batsmen three ovals away.
• Another area of improvement is in scoring on both sides. I have tried to add up the runs by batsmen and extras and separately tried to tally the runs conceded by the bowlers. This yields three versions of scores for our team and two for the opposition. The only saving grace is that our team wins with any of the possible permutations of the various scores. A look at the scorecard will show you the summary of possibilities.