CS-10 XI goes down to a spirited Camberwell XI

In December 1933, Lala Amarnath scored India's first Test century in a match against England at the Gymkhana Ground, Bombay. In spite of his valiant effort, England won that match by nine wickets. Cricinfo refers to a report by Mihir Bose of this match:

"Amarnath was engulfed with spectators, garlanded and congratulated while the band played 'God Save the King'... As the day's play ended, women tore off their jewellery to present it to him, Maharajahs made gifts of money, and India hailed a hero." England's eventual easy win was almost forgotten in the hysteria.

85 years and 4 months later history repeated itself when Andre van der Merwe scored the first century for CS-10 at Willison park, Hartwell against Camberwell XI in a chanceless innings. Even as CS-10 eventually lost the match by a margin wider than Steve Harmison’s opening delivery in the 2005 Ashes, Andre’s brilliant, powerful and chanceless century was truly memorable for all those privileged to be present at the ground. If we could, we would shower Andre with gifts of camels, peacocks and elephants for his outstanding effort.

Given the past rivalries with Camberwell XI, our team assembled the finest talent it had at its disposal for this match. To heighten interest among supporters, a special commemorative collage of the elite players was released for the occasion.


Batting first
After winning the toss and assessing the cloudy and dewy conditions, Sharad chose to bat first. Sharad sent in Harminder and Ahmed to open the umpiring and Soundar and Andre to open the batting. The openers had to contend with the unfamiliar white ball from a largely accurate duo of Kush and Devang. The tight spell from their opening bowlers was impressive and they ensured that they were not exposed by fielding restrictions of the first seven overs. As the scoring rate was just 4.3 after seven overs, Sharad rushed into the field with water, towels, gloves, bats, chai and advice to the batsmen to up the scoring rate. Soundar and Andre ran the sharp singles with excellent calling and rapport. In this time, Andre also showed glimpses of what was to come by hitting his first boundary with a sweetly timed cut over point.

In the 11th over, Andre decided to open up his full array of strokes and despatched Nihar for a 4, then a 6 pulled to cow corner and finally a 6 that was hit so far and high that it crossed the Alamein line train tracks. The ball was then handed to Raunak. Andre was not dazzled by Raunak's name or bowling and greeted him first up with a powerfully pulled 6. He then followed it up with two more boundaries ensuring that Raunak's bowling duties for the day were called to an end. This motivated Soundar hit a peachy boundary and later a pull which almost went for six. After 13 overs and a break for drinks, we were at a healthy 0-98.

Soundar and Andre powered on the team to 0-103 until Soundar was bowled by a fine yorker from Devang. The fine boom of runs was inexplicably followed by a fall of wickets faster than the price of houses in the US. Devang castled Krishna and Raj in one over. The procession of wickets then continued with Sharad getting stumped, your correspondent getting run out on a 'yes-no-no' mix-up with Andre and Kunal being caught by an agile long on. If after this loss of wickets anyone had bothered to ask Andre if we could still put up a competitive score, Andre would have undoubtedly replied with a 'Yes, we can'. He continued unfazed by the fall of wickets and put up a stimulus package to the CS-10 scorecard with a flurry of fours and sixes. With the technology upgrades we now have access to, a large part of Andre's innings was captured in some fantastic close-up shots. Andre's batting higlights package will be commercially sold soon and the proceeds from his autographed copies will fund our club to have buy the hawk-eye, snicko and hot-spot technologies in good time.

After rotating the strike cannily to Andre, Ahmed lost his wicket when he tried to hit one that turned into him. Harminder did some adroit running between the wickets and ensured that Andre could reach his well-deserved landmark. In the 24th over, Andre brought up a fine century with a drive through covers that raced to the boundary. He was eventually run out on 103 and had by then taken our score to a respectable level. Amar and Harminder played out the remaining balls of the 25th over with some well-run singles and a brace to ensure we played out our quota of overs and set up a competitive target of 175.

The chase
As the fielding captain, Krishna was keen to rattle the opposition by not letting them settle into a rhythm by varying the bowlers. He opened with Ahmed and Sagar to the batting pair of Kush and Harshit. The Camberwell XI batsmen were all keen to chance their arm and numerous edges, lofts and French cuts that tantalisingly missed the fielders and stumps. Fortune favours the brave but Kush only managed to look foolish when Kunal removed his off stump in the 3rd over. Raj bowled to Harshit who by this time had hit 27 runs of which 24 had come in boundaries. Raj though splatterd his stumps and roared a roar of fearsome celebration.

This brought to the crease a fresh set of batsmen of which one was named Gopi and the other was named, wait for it, Puppi..!?! I assure you, dear reader, that this is indeed the name recorded in the scorebook. This new pair at the crease resembled more Thomson & Thompson rather than Dravid and Laxman. They survived edges, a tough chance to the reliable Andre, and a catch to short square leg where one existed only the delivery before. However fortune did favour the brave this time. Gopi and Puppi settled into a groove and at drinks break, they were at a steady 2-127. Krishna had rotated the six bowlers including himself. He then brought on Sharad who began well conceding only 4 in his first over. Soundar then began the post-drinks session with a tidy over as well. However, by this time the batsmen flung their bats around and the target was well within their grasp. They hit some lusty blows of the 16th and 17th over to complete their win.

Bouquets and brickbats

Positives:
- Did I mention Andre's batting?
- Sharad and Kunal's tea
- Our ground fielding

Negatives: Easy as I thought it would be, I am actually hard pressed to come up with the negatives. I think we all played to the best of our current abilities. In my personal opinion, We can do better only if we add to our skills. So I tried to find out the actual reasons for our loss today by looking at the events on field and in the rest of the world today which may have played a part. I came up with this: