No excuses for C-town boyz
by Shiva Birdi

May 17th CLEVELAND, OH: 69 degrees F, sunny and clear outside. A perfect day for cricket, a perfect day for top performers to show upand display their game. The pitch was concrete (that's right, no mat!) so it favored the bowling attack because of quickness and low bounces. The ground especially on the leg side was short, giving the batsmen something to aim for. The stage was set for fine friendly matchbetween Cleveland CC and visiting Akron team. The 10:00 AM scheduled match started promptly at around 11:15 (I guessIndian standard time was in effect again) after half the team was lost en route. No worries guys, I had my basketball (so i guess that was half our warm-up) and we even got a chance to see Sai's hops as he dunked all over the place. That's right Harsh, Sai does REALLY dunk. Anyways, Akron won the toss and decided to bat first. Cleveland CC had 10 + our savior Sunny who rolled in his SUV like a knight in shining armor to our rescue (actually he just lied to his work buddies and told them that he had to pick someone up. Slacker!) We were up to the challenge and ran out on to the field like a pack of hungry wolves. Actually I was truly hungry since I didn't get to eat my aloo parathas in the morning.

Prasad opened the bowling attack in his debut as captain. From the beginning it was evident that he meant business and so did the fielding team. Excellent wicket keeping from Ramit and good line and length from Prasad brought the first wicket early as the opener was caught behind the stumps. Sameer followed almost in harmony after a shaky opening over and broke through with a couple of wickets of his own. Sameer even had an excellent play in the field diving to right at point to stop a certain two - three runs. Highlight of the match came in Prasad's third over when he clean bowled two batsmen in a row with excellent pace and pinpoint accuracy. The field caved in for the next delivery as we awaited the next delivery - could it be a hat-trick? The threat was averted with smart defensive batting from Akron. However the damage was already done. Most of Akron's top order batsmen had been dismissed. Shiva and Baqar continued the bowling which was once again tight and well controlled. Almost every delivery was in
line with the middle stump. Shiva struck with an lbw call and was robbed of a "questionable" NO-ball catch. Baqar was unlucky to miss several opportunities where the ball barely missed the stumps, or the ball was just out of line when it hit the pads. Murali followed with even superior accuracy and struck three times dropping the tail-enders like flies. One mishap occurred late in the innings as Prasad moved to his left in long-off in pursuit of a catch when the ball struck his right index finger and dislodged his nail from its bed (a bloody mess I tell ya!). All in all, Akron could not withstand the bowling attack despite the help we tried to give them with our 26 wides. The innings ended on an excellent catch by Nikhil at mid-on where he scraped the ball off the ground into the palm of his hands (Sure Nikhil you're right it was a catch). They were dismissed for low 80's with a few overs to spare.

Our confidence was extremely high and team spirit sky rocketed as the second half of the contest began. With ghosts of two weeks ago lurking close by, the team put aside the near collapse against Columbus behind them and went full throttle ahead. At least, so they thought they did. Nikhil and Ani opened the innings as the rest of us watched them from the sidelines relaxing in the green grass and taking in the rays. Most of us spoke of how we wouldn't even have to bat since our openers would just knock out all the runs we needed. Ani displayed some of his confident stroke play early in the match and it seemed though as if he was just about to get set on the pitch. Then the mistakes started. Ani was caught behind chasing a delivery wide of the stumps. Sunny followed and settled in when Nikhil also dismissed early caught in the field. Shiva and Sunny stuck at the stumps for a while however adding some hits, some legs byes, some byes. Then Shiva, who never really settled in, got bowled on an excellent in-swinging delivery. Sunny, playing despite obvious pain in his knees, stuck in till late in the order giving us a display of some his classic pull strokes for fours. We were 59 for 4 with several overs to spare and the task seemed very attainable. We were beginning to feel some anxiety but had confidence
since we had good batting left. Sudeep along with Sunny had steadied the innings with some excellent cover drives and firm batting. Then like Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde we flipped the script and we were a whole different team. Sudeep's dismissal became the ignition switch as the rest of the team was burnt to a crisp with deliveries right on the stumps. All we could do was watch as each batsman was either bowled going for a big shot or caught lbw on low rising balls while on the back foot. It was as if we didn't know what to do with the deliveries. To Akron's credit, the bowling was unbelievable. Every ball was right on the stumps and of perfect length. We just didn't know what to do with it. So the final wicket soon fell and all the dominoes were flat on the floor. We were all out for just about 10 runs from our target.

Stunned, we watched the Akron team in the middle of the pitch celebrating and chanting "Ole! Ole..." Most of us disgusted at
ourselves and our poor batting performance, sat on the grass bewildered as to what had gonewrong. How did we lose that match? Why couldn't we score 80 odd runs? Some blamed the pitch, some blamed the club history of collapse, some blamed the batting, some blamed the 26 wides, some blamed the overconfidence. I personally think it's because the lunch came so damn late!! Ok, so really... we all know its not one thing or one person....its a loss either way. This loss more than anything has taught us that nothing is certain in cricket, no score is too low and every team is a formidable opponent. Our job, once again - HAVE FUN!!! Win or lose, give a 100 % with or without the parathas and oh yea I guess we need some more practice too.

Good luck Cleveland CC x 2 (for both teams) and good luck to Akron in the tournament. See you on the flip side.