The game started remarkably close to scheduled time. We won the toss and elected to field, the decision provoked by the absence of Nikhil, who had to drop off his parents whose departure strategically coincided with the start of the Mid-West tourney. The team did its warm-ups. Shiva was chosen to lead the group in the warm-ups, lest we lose any player to injury during Sameer's Karate drills.

Kuljeet and Sandeep started the match with some tight bowling not allowing any width or time for the Charleston openers to free their arms. Kuljeet was particularly unlucky not to get any wickets in his first spell. Sonny had some trouble getting his line right to the lefty. Almost everyone had something to offer as advice to sonny, which could be quite infuriating if its quite obvious what you have to do, but your body doesn't quite follow what your mind wants you to do. Its not like, you can take a pill that will perk you up. Their openers had few strokes to offer and what few runs they got were through wides, edges and nudges - in that order. Three overs each from Kuljeet and Sandeep, and we still had not gotten our first break-through.

At this point in time, Sameer and Lokesh were introduced as the first and second change bowlers. Sameer started off well. The two openers had great difficulty just managing to get bat onto ball. It was more of the ball getting onto the bat. Lokesh started off bowling five wides off his first over. His second over ,however, was a different deal altogether. He cut down his variations, his pace and his run-up. A ball pitched up in the corridor caught the captain, neither here nor there, plumb in front. Doc Lok had done it again - provided the break-through when we needed it. Immediately following the fall of the first wicket as is the case with any partnership (in terms of time at the wicket), fell the second wicket. The other opener, trying to up the pace, lifted one straight to a simple catch to mid-off, safely held by Badri. From then on, it was a steady collapse(whatever that means!). Sameer picked up a wicket with one of his toe-crushers which missed the toe but hit the stumps, while loks just kept on picking up wicket after wicket. The pick of the wickets being a wicked yorker that sent Higgins quacking. Six wickets gone for 43 runs after 17 overs. At this point, the leg-ump questioned sameer's action, which was resolved amicably by the two captains. Play resumed. Lokesh continued on one end with Badri being brought in to bowl his leggies. The first couple of overs saw some nice fielding display from Shiva at point where he cut a boundary (if not for the grass) with a nice dive.

And then it happened. A ball looped onto the leg stump was flicked in the air by the batsman. Romy, at square-leg, in an amazing show of athleticism took a sharp one-handed catch with his left hand. The hours of pre-match warm-up exercises surely helped in the 25 mm vertical stretch Romy displayed while taking the catch. The tail-enders frustrated the team for a few more overs, before Rajan and Sandeep wiped the tail off with some clever bowling. So the final analysis read 5 for the Doc, 2 for Sonny, 1 for Sameer, 1 for Badri and 1 for Rajan. The notable minuses and pluses from the game were 30+ extras in a score of 78, and no catches dropped.

CCC2 started its "paari" with Nikhil and Rajan opening. Sunil and Venkat opened the bowling for Charleston. They were not spectacular, but did not seem to trouble the batsmen too much either. Rajan played some nice punches off the backfoot, and Nikhil was quite steady in his batting. Against the scheme of things, Charleston who had done nothing right until then, got Nikhil to hole out to fine-leg. The ball was pitched on his legs, Nikhil flicked it, the ball caught his top-edge. Higgins caught a nice running high catch over his shoulders. Lokesh walked in one-down. From then on, CCC2 was pretty much in cruise control. Rajan stuck to his plan of taking a single of every ball and not trying anything rash - for maybe, 3 overs. Once he had gotten his eye in, he whacked every ball which was pitched up to him and in the slot over mid-on, over mid-off and anywhere in between. Lokesh played some delectable square drives (?) and some nice pulls off some very ordinary bowling. Rajan did get a reprieve early in the game, but took full advantage of the "life", and scored 49 runs to take the team to victory with another whack over mid-wicket. Lokesh made 21 and was not-out. Lokesh was adjudged man of the match for his all-round display : 5 wickets, 21 runs and a catch. Romy was adjudged as the best fielder :) . A good victory against a not-so good team. But its a win and that's what counts. If not for the wides, and the inability to wipe off the tail, it would have been a perfect beginning to the season.      Click here for Scorecard