Chak De PG

There are lots of events that are held in our hostel. One of them was the volleyball competition. There were about 5-6 teams that were competing in this. All the team members were UG guys (UnderGraduates). So there was no team to represent the PG guys ( PostGraduates ). So the organiser approached one of my friends and he agreed to cobble up a team. After we discussed it among ourselves, 6 of us from Mtech 1st year computer science batch managed to form a team. Anand was made our captain. Now he was the only guy in the team who knew how to play this game. (We actually had to ask him all the rules minutes before our first game got underway ).

So thus we formed a PG team and our match schedule was put up. Our first match was against the team representing the fifthies (5th year UG). The match was to be held at the volleyball ground inside our hostel. Special arrangements like putting up floodlights were done for this competition. And soon the day when our first match was to be held,arrived. And then our match started.

There were 6 of us..All from our class.From Left to right : Anand our captain (the blue dress), Saurab(red dress next to Anand), vishal, Ajitav, me, Akash.Since most of us were playing this game for the first time, our first game was very funny. I will recreate some of the scenes that happened that day. As usual it will be a bit exaggerated :D.


Ajitav : Everyone take up their positions

Sourab : Mera position kaha hei be

Ajitav : Jaha court mei space hei ,waha tera position

Sourab : Sahi tactics hei be

Game started. The ball comes into our court.

Anand : mine mine mine mine....
Hits the ball back. Again the ball comes back.
Anand : mine mine mine mine....
After 15 minutes :
Anand : mine mine mine mine....

Ajitav : Abee kya mine mine, ab mera mine mine...and he hit the shot :D

Once the ball came to me. I hit the shot and it went outside.

Ajitav : c'mon guys, play well, we can win..by the way score was around 20-2, with them leading.

The ball came to our court, Sourab hit the ball and it went out. He comes to Ajitav.
Ajitav was getting very desperate by now.

Sourab : Yaar ajitav, ball ko aise marna hei ya aise.

Ajitav : abee tu mere ko hi maar.

And by this time the first set got over and score was around 25-5

Anand was playing fantastic with his big smashes. But he wasn't getting much support from the remaining guys. We often end up hitting each other's asses instead of the ball. Another time when the ball was coming everyone shouted mine mine mine...and then each of us hearing the other guys call mine mine mine, left the ball with the result that no one hit the ball. But somehow we managed to pull up our socks and won the 2nd set. That gave us some amount of confidence that we too can give those guys a run for their money. But that confidence was short lived when we were bombed to pieces by the opposition attack in the 3rd set. Thus we lost our first match. But hey, we won a set playing our first match guys!!!.

Our 2nd match was held 2 days later. By now the fame of the PG team had spread to every corner of the hostel. This match was against the sophies (2nd years) . But this time we got an additional member in our team. Praneet was his name. And he is Mtech 1st year Electrical engineering (I think). We were not very sure how well he plays and so initially he was a substitute. The match started. And as usual we lost the first set. But that day we were playing better than we had done in the first match. So though we lost the first set, it was by a narrow margin. In the 2nd set, it was a comeback of sorts as we came from behind to hold the set. The 3rd game saw a see saw battle. In between anand made a change and brought in Praneet. After sometime we realised that he actually plays the 2nd best in the team, after Anand. Thus his addition to the team improved our team performance. At one point they were leading and at other times we were leading. The score reached 21-20, we leading. They score 2 points in a row. Score 22-21 they leading. We score one more. Score 22-22. Then Vishal delivered 3 killer serves in a row and yahooooooooooo, we won our first match!!!!!!!!There were huge celebrations among ourselves. The underdogs defeated the abovedogs( or whatever you want to call the opposition team ).

After this match, there was rain for the next few days and so no matches were held. and since we didn't get to hear anything from the organisers we thought maybe we are out of the competition on account of our first match loss. But a few days later we were told that our semifinal (yeah we reached the semifinals!!!!) match was the next day. Unfortunately that day, due to a pending assignment submission I had to miss out of the match. After the assignment I got back to the hostel. By then the match was already over. I asked Vishal what the score was. He looked at me with a dejected face. I got worried and asked "Kya hua yaar"
Vishal : "Hum jeet gayeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee" and burst into a big smile
I was like wooooooooooow, we did it again!!!!!!!! And this time, believe it or not, it was in straight sets. The underdogs were in the finals!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The next day was our final match. Since we had a good winning combination now, I offered to be the substitute. We were going to be play against the best team we had seen so far in the tournament. We had seen their semifinal match and they were simply superb. But now we too were not bad. anand and Praneet as usual the champs. vishal had improved a lot. They formed our front "army". They ensured that most of the balls coming into our court were handled between the 3 of them with the others providing the back support whenever the ball coming into our courts gets out of their reach.

The game started. Both the teams were equally good which meant long rallies and thus a good eye feast for the audience. The cheering was rocking high on both sides, with PG cheer squad performing better (obviously :D ). The first set was closely fought, but in the end we won it. The 2nd set too was nothing less than a see saw battle, but we were always in the lead though by 1 or 2 points. Towards the middle we accelerated our performance and we reached a score 22-15. But after that they started scoring continously and was begining to close in the gap. The score read 22-21. Then we scored 2 quick points. They scored 1 more point.Score 24-22. Tension mounting. Our team serving. Anand served, they returned..after juggling in our court for sometime Anand went for a smash...the ball went flying to the other court zooooooommmm. We won the poiint, the set, the match and the tournment!!!!!!!!!!!!!We created history (don't ask me why). The underdogs have won the "prestigious" Hostel volleyball competition. Soon after we were given our trophies:- a Rs 20 food coupon!!! woow can anyone think of a better trophy :D.
But that day will always be a memorable one. We bunch of first timers got together to win a tournament no one expected us to win. The main credit for this goes to our star Anand though the contributions of others were by no means less. It really does feel good to win a tournament as underdogs ;).