The Cricket God is greater than The Weather God
The game was on Saturday and everyone wanted to play considering the last weekend was a washout. There was this unknown cloud hovering over everyone’s head since Friday. The suspense of uncertainty, whether the game will happen or not on Saturday. I am pretty sure all the eleven players checked the weather app multiple times prior to and during the game. There was rain forecast and our game was at 12:30. All the games at other fields got washed except Phoenixville. But luckily games were going on in Phoenixville ground. As usual, reached the field first and waited for the rest of the players. One by one rest of the players came except Yash #theinnovator and Shankar #thesouthhero. I was anxiously waiting for #theinnovator for our religious start of the game but he didn’t show up on time. We found out our #thesouthhero missed some mysterious exit from Downingtown to Phoenixville and #theinnovator did some innovation while driving and met with an accident. Jokes apart, he was fine and joined late.
I don’t want to jinx the toss, we took batting without thinking twice. The umpire suggested reducing the overs as the forecast was saying rain will come at 2 o’clock and I was greedy to play 15 overs and didn’t listen to him. I should have, more drama is coming in a few mins. We had a decent start, 5 overs 23 without losing any wicket. We lost 3 wickets in the next 5 runs. We (#themadcaptain and Ravi #thepromisingstar) started building a small partnership of 20 runs until #thepromisingstar got run out due to #themadcaptain’s fault. It was good to see the positive intent in #thepromisingstar’s batting, welcome to the team, Ravi. A big shout out to Raghu #thescientist’s handy 11 runs which pushed the score to 81 in 15 overs.
The score was not big but the pitch was totally unpredictable, few balls were going above the head. The bowlers knew just to pitch the ball and it will be taken care. #thescientist and #theniceguy started really well and took 3 wickets in the first 4 overs. Right then during the 5th or 6th over it started drizzling and for some reason, the #themadcaptain got the idea the D/L rule will be applied after 8 overs and we started rushing. Fortunately or unfortunately the opponents fell for it and started swinging the bat to bring up the run-rate, they couldn’t bump up the run-rate but the rain started becoming heavy. They found out that points will be shared and D/L rule is not used in TCL, hence they didn’t want to play. It’s understandable as they were in bad condition. There were a lot of arguments but eventually, they had to resume as the rain stopped. They started connecting and hit a couple of boundaries but it was good to see resiliency in our bowlers. They kept on taking wickets in regular intervals. Then came the situation where #themadcaptain was scratching his head as he thought he didn’t have a good 5th bowler option. Of course, he was wrong, Royal #thestuntman cleared that doubt. He bowled 2 match-saving overs at the end esp. the last over where they could score only 1 run. Awesome job by #thestuntman for his contribution. Here is the scorecard.
Man-of-the-match is #thescientist for his well-deserved all-round performance in batting and bowling. But the #madness title for this week goes to #thestuntman.
Strengths:
Improved a lot in bowling since the last game.
Resilience in bowling.
Good to see everyone sticking together while arguing and teasing opponents.
Opportunities:
We still need to work on our fielding.
We are still learning about each other as 2 new team members joined in this game. I learned one of the main things in this team, the players who focus on their own game (rather than others) perform better. So I would highly encourage you to focus on your own game. I am sure you already know that but sometimes it helps to get a reminder.
Now some fun fact, the count of sixes in this season reached 10 after #themadhitter started this journey.