Defeat is what instills the desire to get better! This was the thought
with which the Cleveland 1 team drove back from a one-sided affair on
Saturday, June 25th from the OSU field.

With several members of the regular team being absent over this last
weekend, the game originally scheduled for Sunday, June 26th at our
home field was pre-poned to be played on Saturday, June 25th at OSU.
Inspite of missing several frontline members, the team was composed and
confident that we would be able to still muster a good fight. But COBCA
clearly had other plans.

Ani won the toss and keeping in mind COBCA’s recent track of chasing
totals, decided to bat first. The game plan was to avoid his batsman
from being pressurized by COBCA’s disciplined bowling attack during a
chase. However, Cleveland 1 started disastrously, with Ravi Nair gone
to a beautiful outswinger on the very first ball of the game. Ravi P
followed his disastrous run with the bat and got out to another duck,
being cleaned up by Bhavya. Note must be made of the extravagant swing
that the COBCA bowlers were getting with the excessive humid conditions
on the field. Ani and Badri decided to just stick around, and kept the
COBCA bowlers at bay for about 10 overs. Just when things seemed like
getting back to decency, Ani was out LBW to an inswinging delivery from
Vibhash. Badri followed soon after. Vignesh and Murali then stabilized
the innings to give the innings some sort of shape. At the second
drinks session Cleveland 1 was 91/6 in 24 overs. An unnecessary mix-up
between Murali and Vignesh resulted in Murali’s run out, the
partnership yielded 45 runs. From there, the last 3 wickets fumbled
around for another 15 runs, and that end the Cleveland 1 innings at
114/10 in 31.3 overs. Vibhash with 4 and Bhavya with 9/2 in 7 overs
were the main destroyers. Credit must be given where it is due, and I
must say that the line, length and swing demonstrated by Bhavya and
Vibhash was exemplary.

COBCA started the chase very confidently and were scoring with cautious
and disciplined batting. Kiran and Prashant were not able to swing the
ball as much as the COBCA bowlers and that resulted in easy pickings
for the COBCA batsmen. Frankly, I don’t think we bowled the same fuller
length that COBCA had. Vignesh picked up the first wicket to a sharp
catch taken by debutant Sunil at gully. That instilled some energy and
voice back into Cleveland1. At this stage COBCA was @ 30/1 in 8 overs.
Vibhash strode out to the crease with confidence and immediately got
into his act by unleasing some well-timed shots to the midwicket and
deep square-leg area. Again, our bowling was the culprit here. We were
feeding them short-picthed deliveries. Ani was constantly asking his
bowlers to bowl fuller, make the batsmen drive, give the ball more
chance to swing in air, but our bowlers just kept pegging it short!

Mention must be made of Sunil and Devi Prasad who really bowled with
full zeal and even though are inexperienced in this team, definitely
stood out in their effort. In the end the COBCA team strode home with
more than 11 overs to spare and for the loss of just 2 wickets. Vibhash
Vaidya was Man of the Match for his 4 wickets and 40 runs.

Overall, this was a performance not fitting a champion team! Before we
departed Ani pumped up the team asking everyone to rise to the
occasion, and get back in to the winning tracks with the remainder of
the preliminary round.