Today just happened to be my day !!

Cricket is my passion...talk about cricket when i am asleep, and I wake up.... (what a really bad sentence !!). On the field, I go by the nickname Venkatesh Prasad...although he could bowl a bit, he was miserable at batting...Gary Kirsten and Sanath Jayasuriya used to whip his ass everytime...

SPANDAN '08 cricket finals were to be held today afternoon. We were up against a pretty good team, our seniors. Our team had a good balance of batsmen and bowlers, but the only problem was that we were lacking in batting practice. In the previous matches too, batsmen found their rhythm only after they were in for an over or two...

Our seniors won the toss and decided to bat first...they found the going a bit tough with Rakesh keeping the length tight and irritating the batsmen with his immaculate line. Santhosh (Anna) came in first change and troubled the batsmen again. There weren't many boundary hits by the end of the innings, and they ended up with 71 in 12 overs....

During the break, we were discussing about keeping things simple, as we needed just 6 runs per over. But as usual, when you plan to detail, all planning goes awry.....

Santosh VKRN and Bokkal (a la Venkatapathy Raju in stature....but a superb batsman though) opened the innings. Santosh had saved us in the previous matches with match winning efforts..and naturally we were expecting something special today....

But it was total disaster by the end of the first over...we were 2 for 2. The second and third overs saw the dismissals of Rakesh, Anna and Guru. The score read 11 / 5 in 4 overs. I went in next with one guy behind me to come.....I was nervous facing the first few balls as the seniors were all fired up with the loss of early wickets....

Srinidhi was at the other end screaming at me "Stay there and I 'll score the runs..".
After i took 2 singles, my legs started aching a bit, so I asked Guru to be my runner. My favorite bowler then arrived on the scene... Nagesh was his name and he bowled gentle medium pace...
I waited 3 balls and swished my bat across the line on the 4th... it went high and landed outside the rope.... 5th ball again a six to Long-On... After hitting that shot, I felt that there was something different... it was either with the bat or me...

My friends sitting on the other side of the rope had gone silent for some time, but started to celebrate these shots... The only mistake our seniors did was to concede one full toss per over while trying to maintain speed. Guru was giving me advice full time...
Some of his quotes
"You have already hit 6 per over da..we are above the required rate"
"Dont get tense da...we are above the required rate"
"Dont swing the bat da...we are above the required rate"

I was actually enjoying my batting and listening to Guru was fun :)

I rode my luck though....and somehow managed to keep the required rate down....in the middle of all this commotion, I managed to take singles off the last ball and frustrated Srinidhi.
It was finally down to 5 off the last 3 overs....and the bowler bowled tried to bowl a yorker...but ended up as a high full toss....

As soon as I had hit it, I started running for my life screaming....all my friends got up and ran towards me, removed my shoes and spectacles and hugged me dearly....and finally threw me into the pond !!! :)

It was their way of appreciating my knock...Thanks a lot guys...
Apologies Srinidhi, for hogging up the strike :)
Thank you, team mates for a wonderful day....I will always think about this day if I have some disappointing days....

And before I was thrown into the pond, someone said I was a bit heavy... for my height (6'2") I am just 68 kg, a bit less than the specified BMI (Body Mass Index)