Feels good to be back to writing after a long hiatus. I think the timing of the first two blogs was right but I couldn’t continue with the third or the fourth and I just lost momentum after that. Probably its like building an innings and I need to learn that and take it to perfection. The feedback on the first two blogs always motivated me and here is another one. To all those people who are waiting to here something on the third tourney, I assure you I will be back on the third one shortly, this time without loosing the momentum.
It was sometime around February 2008 that BMC was thinking of organising the fourth internal tournament. Cricket was in the air and the passion as lively as ever. But I must confess, I was least bothered. After winning three times in a row and winning convincingly, it was just not motivating. I heard some of the teams practising right from January to have a go, the others started after the usual update meeting with the organisers. I just felt it was time for someone else now, we have done it three times and we did it in style. Personally for me the zeal and the enthusiasm were missing, probably for the first time. The rest of the Vikings though, had other plans and if I had to pin point the person then it should be Pradeep Rai.
Pradeep is always filled with positive energy. He was the one who initiated and motivated everyone to start with practise. We had a discussion at the start and Pradeep, Aditya, Prasad and Durgesh had asked me to take on the mantle and be their captain to which I was totally against. I had mailed the whole team that I wouldn’t be playing this time coz I was fed up of winning J. Bjorn Borg had lost his craving for Wimbledon, after winning Wimbledon 5 times in a row. Probably I had the after effect of reading that article. Coming back to Pradeep, even after reading that mail he walks to my desk and asks me No in fact he tells me that Abhijeet I know you are going to make it to the team. A week from that day this had been his everyday routine with additions everyday like “ Are Yaar, Is Baar hame dikhana hain ki Nitin Rathod ke bina bhi hum jeet sakte hain”. That sentence really rattled my thoughts, it shook me in and out coz he had a point. Nitin was Vikings highest run getter and one of our best bowlers. To play without him was like playing without your right hand. That really brought me back to the team and it gave me a reason to play and prove something. Pradeep you deserve all the credit for this.
Rahul Saraf was ready to shoulder the responsibility of being a captain and I had a sigh of relief coz now the responsibility was on right shoulders and I could concentrate on my own game. The practise started in the regular Vikings style with all the managers chipping in namely Sanju, Shirish and Sandeep. A triplet of new faces Vineet, Tejas and Chaitanya made it more interesting. I could sense their potential on the first day itself, coz they had a right mindset. Never give up and stay cool. If I had to put that in Rahulian way then he says Attitude. Sole reason for him to recruit them and I could sense that in the game. It really did pay off in the end.
This time around the frequency of practise had gone down drastically, not that people didn’t want to but with Agile implemented time constraints did start coming our way. Iteration after Iteration, release after release it all looked in making people like machines. Practise at the start was unlike the Viking way, the number of players was low, and ground booking issues did play a big part. Though overall more importance was given to fielding. Our first match was against DSM II. Ajay Kumar was their captain and who ever have met him would definitely say that he definitely has something to say, on whatever topic and whichever place. But he seriously looks at his game and tries to prove his point to his critics. I always told Vikings never to take any team lightly and for DSM II it was no different. They had played league matches and we had to play them as our first match. It does make a difference on tennis ball cricket. You need to do a lot of adjustment and the team should look settled, match practise that was everyone says! It was a tough match for us; our batting was shaky, roles and responsibilities a bit unclear, fielding not up to the Vikings standards. We somehow managed to scrape through, and everyone who saw that match would have never dreamt Vikings winning the tournament. It was indeed a wake up call for us, time for realignment of our team, time for some long discussions.
These discussions were pretty fruitful. In some other teams these discussions lead to blame game, internal fights, aggravated ego’s etc. But with Vikings it was smooth affair coz everyone was willingly ready to accept the captain’s decision. We did a SWOT analysis of every player and for me the best decision was to promote Aditya up the order. He had played the first match at 5th position and seeing his strengths we decided him to open the innings. He was ready for this challenge and this really sorted things. The other decision was in fielding positions. Point, Gully and short fine leg were decided to be closer than usual and we expected to get at least one run out from these positions, probably most of the other teams might not have even thought of run outs. All these decisions paid off handsomely in our next match against the enthusiastic DSM support.
If I had to put money on a team to win the tournament then undoubtedly it would be DSM Support. They had a right mix about everything. Dedication, Determination was all visible. To practise after working in night shift is really phenomenal. I expected them at least to be in the finals, but unfortunately they had run onto us in the Quarters. All the plans that we did were executed to perfection. We bowled first and DSM Support bated well to score 48 runs in the first six overs. The next six overs we were able to hold them back, and that really started the frustration in the DSM Support camp. The highlight was the run out of Hari. People who might have watched that incident might think that it was an un-sporting behaviour. But to all those people who were on the field including the umpires it was pretty clear that Hari was trying to distract me from the non-strikers end. Probably they thought the only way for them to score against us was to nullify my bowling with these tactics. Hari, if you hadn’t distracted me, I would have surely given you a warning for you leaving the crease and for all people who think this was un-sportsman like, do think twice. We had to score around 76 runs in allotted 12 overs, and our batsman did it in style. Steady batting from our openers Adiya and Vineet gave us a good start. Akshat joined the party and i remember him hitting one right onto the tree and to see that from a non-strikers end is a joy in itself. It was not given a six by the umpires but truly we had made a mark and our opponents were reeling under tremendous pressure. It was my privilege to be in a situation to score 14 runs in 2 overs. We achieved it with a over to spare.
I had put in a lot of effort into my batting going into this match, coz I had analysed that we need to really bat well to get past good teams like DSM Support. I had changed my bat holding grip, made adjustments into my stance and built a lot of confidence in practise by batting everyday, something that I am really not used to. And it was good to see all this coming good at the very first instance. Going back to the second tourney my major focus was on bowling and the thinking was to bowl well consistently. I had fairly achieved that with 4 wickets in every match that I played. We won handsomely. In the third tourney I knew that I was expected to bowl well, but I wanted to make a mark in fielding and it came out finally in the finals, a planned dismissal and I was myself surprised with the catch taken. I always dreamt of taking a catch like that, running about 30 yards with the ball coming above your head and of a batsman who is a match winner. The match turned drastically from that catch and long hours put into fielding practise were rewarded. And since I had achieved things in bowling and fielding my major focus for this tournament was on batting. With Nitin not in the line up I felt I had to take that up and it was good to see it coming through in quarters and then I wished it continues in Semis.
Our opponents were DSM I in the semis and it was called the “Mother of All Battles”. It definitely lived up to that tag coz it went down to the wire. The pendulum shifted from one side to the other and finally it was a tie. First time in the history of BMC we had a match decided on bowl out in which Vikings came out victorious, thanks to Vineet for hitting the target, we had won the match well before it was my turn to hit the wickets.
This match had all the ingredients in right quantities. DSM won the toss and asked us to bowl. Shirish Sonawane was a star for DSM I and he did play well for the first six overs. DSM I were 48 in the first six. He had good partnerships with Nitin and others but a rash stroke from him did let them down. Rahul Saraf planned and bowled well to get rid of Nitin. A couple of run outs and we had to chase 84 runs in 12 overs. Our openers did there job as planned. We had asked them to stay at the wicket and try and get 6 runs/over for the first 5 overs at least. That would give us the platform to launch an attack and they managed to quite do it this time as well. But we lost a few wickets in succession and DSM was right on top. I was at the crease with somewhere around 50 runs required in 6 overs with six wickets in hand. Amit Sharma bowled an awesome delivery which crash landed in my stumps. I was walking towards the pavilion when the umpires asked me to stay back as it was a No ball. That was the moment .......the best moment for me. Akshat was at the other end and he had a sigh of relief it surely must have been the same case in the dressing room. From then on Akshat first and then Rahul and myself put our heads down, concentrated on singles and we had to get 29 runs in the last 3, two overs of which were to be bowled by Sripal. It’s always good to have Rahul in the middle in such situations coz he really takes the attack to the opposition, and it was good to see him hitting some lusty blows to get the run rate down. We had decided to run for our lives and in the process he was run out. Same was the case with Aditya. Risky running between the wickets cost us his wicket. But in the process we had created some panic in the opposition. The panic was evident and people might still not believe it but Chaintanya Kulkarni and I ran 3 runs with ball pushed to the leg umpire. With Sripal bowling, I had decided to bat by covering my stumps, moving towards the offside just to make him think differently. It paid off, not that I scored a few boundaries but it kept the score card ticking. In those circumstances I felt Sripal bowled well, the fielding let them down and they were not able to regroup. I was runout with 2 to win with 1 ball to go. In all those 27 runs that we had scored in 17 balls, only one boundary was hit. Tejas Saner walked to the stumps with 2 required in 1 ball. He was as cool as a cucumber. He walked to the stumps, the only instructions given to him was get bat to ball. He did that with ball running to short third man and the match was a tie. In the bowl out only Vineet scored and I was yet to get my chance when we were declared winners. It was an amazing moment. We had achieved what we had set off far. The three new comers Vineet, Chaitanya and Tejas had played their part. Aditya, Akshat played a matured role. Rahul Saraf was best at handling people. All in all it gave us a lot of satisfaction. But it was not over yet, as we had to play the finals on the same day against Remedy with 3 hours in-between and in scorching heat. But the achievement earlier in the day made us look fresh and we were ready for the Remedy challenge.
Remedy team has always been known for scoring huge amount of runs, a pack of star players Abhijeet Gadgil, Ashwin Patil, Rahul Shah, Ranjit Jadhav, Ram, Yogesh and even Sachin Narale. All these people can take apart any attack. We had all these in our minds going into this match. We had played them in the finals the last time as well and they had run us close. The plan was quite the same as for DSM I. We won the toss and took to bowling in scorching heat of 3 PM. It was a unanimous decision to bowl to which I was taken by surprise, coz in the meetings before these matches I had suggested that we bowl first if we win the toss coz our strength was bowling, to which most of the players did not agree and here in finals it all changed probably due to the match played earlier, but I knew at that very moment that we were heading in right direction. Tejas and Vineet bowled awesomely and to some extent the Remedy players got their strategy all wrong. They started blocking every other ball and the run rate was so low that all the audience would have surely yawned at least once. That did surprise the Vikings and at that very moment we new we had a very good chance as they had probably got it all wrong. In the second half of Remedy innings Hrishikesh Deshmukh had other plans, he put his foot across and hit me for a couple of boundaries. Our fielding had dipped a bit probably due to fatigue & heat and Hrishikesh took full advantage of it to take Remedy to a respectable total. Our chase was quite brilliant with Aditya and Vineet creating frustration in the opposition camp as they did not loose their wickets easily and managed to keep the scoreboard ticking. A couple of wickets here and there and I had to go out to make 32 runs in 4 overs. It was some unknown guy bowling to me and he bowled it right at places where I wanted him to. Anyone who has seen me play would never like to pitch the ball back of length and outstide offstump, he would have to surely fetch the ball from the square boundary unless he has a sweeper or wide third man. I scored a couple of boundaries of him and we had got the momentum going our way. I must admit that we had put ourselves in such situation coz 32 runs in four overs is also a daunting task. We had to finally get 17 runs of the last 2 overs, which we achieved with 4 balls to spare. This was followed by a victory dance with even Shubhangi joining in. It was truly one of the most memorable day for us.
Vikings haven’t lost a single match since 4 years and yes we had lived to expectations once again. We had managed to weigh our strengths perfectly. The roles and responsibilities were taken up willingly, and yes the last two weeks of practising early mornings at 7 AM University ground was amazing. The commitment to work late nights and still be available for practise, the decision of changing the timings from evenings to morning......all paid off...... I remember one practise session in which we had even practised sledging. Though this time we didn’t require it but yes it did bring up a smile. Tejas’s statement “Howrya” would be remembered throughout my life. Durgesh , Prasad even you people played your roles to perfection. The enthusiasm was never lost. The support staff of Ashish Pathak, Pradeep Bagul and Ashish Modak was amazing.
Thanks everyone to give me these moments. The “Gibocche” moments still linger onto my mind. I look at those moments to derive motivation and inspiration whenever I am low. I have written all this so that I just don’t forget even the minutest of things.
Your feedback is really important and I am looking forward to it just before I write something on the missing third one . Also do add in if I have missed onto something.
........Baks.........
........Baks.........
