It's KPL season folks. For the uninitiated, Kresit Premier League (KPL), the baap of IPL, is organised and played by the CSE Mtech students. It was started by our seniors last year and we are continuing the tradition this year with much more vigour. This year the prize money for the winning team is KPL $3500. There are 5 teams with one girl in each team. Special rules were made to make sure girls contributed equally to the win(or loss) of the team. Auctions were conducted and a cost was fixed for each player. The starting price of each player was Rs.10. The costliest player in the auction was Kiran TVS with Rs.265 - narrowly overtaking my cost of Rs.40. More details of KPL can be found here.
All the teams have been practising vigorously for the past few days. Keeping in mind the big expectations that my team had in me due to the heavy cost they had to pay to buy me out, I wanted to give my best too. So I spent 2 days googling on how to hold a cricket bat properly and also on how to safe guard my strategic points when facing fast bowlers.
Finally the D-day arrived (23rd March,2010 AD).
Venue : KV grounds, IIT powai
Teams : Ultimate Warriors (yups that's my team) Vs The Strikers
Time : 7:00 am (#%&*@$!#* - waking up in the morning sucks)
Some team won the toss and they chose something. All I know is that we were given the ball and asked to bowl. According to the rules, the girl members from both the teams have to sit out for the first 4 overs. Sagar started the proceedings for our team. He stuck to our game plan which, I guess, must have been to bowl well. Maybe it was because Tarun didn't attend our team meeting when we made the extra ordinary game plan that we will bowl well. Or maybe the opposing team had sent in their spies and overheard our game plan of bowling well and made their own extraordinary counter game plan - to bat well. Whatever was the reason our team owner and bowler Tarun got thrashed all over the place the next over.
But somehow we managed to put brakes on the opposition till over number 4. I was quite extra ordinary in the field, making sure that not even a single ball crossed me to reach the boundary. That was not because not even a single ball came in my direction, it was just because I am extra ordinary.
Next was the girl's over. In came our heroine, Neha Jain a.k.a Maathe. The villainess, the girl from "The Strikers", Ambika a.k.a Ambu took guard at the wickets. Maathe had been preparing rigorously for this match for last 2 days. She made sure she had put in that extra effort to gulp down 2 more aloo parathas in addition to her exisitng quota of 5 aloo parathas inorder to get that extra energy.
Maathe gets ready to throw her first ball. Ultimate warriors had only one question in mind
"Will Maathe's ball ever reach the wickets?"
The Strikers had only one question in their minds
"Will Ambu ever be able to lift the bat"
Maathe throws. Ambu lifts the bat.
First bounce...second bounce....third bounce....
After 5 minutes
100th bounce...101st bounce....
No one had the patience to wait till the ball reached the wicket and so it was picked up midway. The ball was declared a dead ball.
Maathe had a I-knew-just-2-extra-aloo-parathas-were-not-enough look on her face. But Ultimate warriors showed true team spirit and encouraged Maathe to go on (as they had no other option - a girl's over was compulsory). Maathe finally managed to complete her 20-ball over in which 14 balls were declared dead.
Finally we finished our quota of 7 overs. The Strikers had made 53 runs. Thus our target was 54. Our opening batsmen - Kiran and Tarun. Both of them struck terror in the opponents hearts with their batting skills. The Strikers struck back by striking off Tarun stumps. Sagar, the next batsman, continued from where Tarun stopped. During the 5th over, Maathe too contributed and proved her mettle by hitting a boundary and by the beginning of the 7th over , the game was over. Ultimate warriors crushes The Strikers by 5 wickets!!!
After the celebrations of the morale boosting victory was over I returned to my room. I found Kukri in front of his computer.
"So how was the match"
"Naa it was easy. Nothing that me or my team couldn't handle"
"Cool, so how many wickets did you take"
"I didn't have to. My boys had it under control".
"Right, so in other words they didn't give you any over to bowl. Fine how many runs did you make".
"I am a middle order batsman. So you see I was supposed to come 7 down, but that situation didn't arise".
"How many players are there in the team".
"8"
"So you are the last man to bat. Great. Atleast tell me you fielded well".
"Of course I would have fielded well if the ball had come to me".
"So in short you didn't bat, you didn't bowl, you didn't field. What exactly did you do. Tell me atleast you touched the ball"
"Of course I did"
"When"
"During the drinks interval"
Update : In the 2nd match of the day Dark Knights Vs Powai Panthers, Dark Knights won by 40 runs. Tomorrow we face Powai Panthers.
All the teams have been practising vigorously for the past few days. Keeping in mind the big expectations that my team had in me due to the heavy cost they had to pay to buy me out, I wanted to give my best too. So I spent 2 days googling on how to hold a cricket bat properly and also on how to safe guard my strategic points when facing fast bowlers.
Finally the D-day arrived (23rd March,2010 AD).
Venue : KV grounds, IIT powai
Teams : Ultimate Warriors (yups that's my team) Vs The Strikers
Time : 7:00 am (#%&*@$!#* - waking up in the morning sucks)
Some team won the toss and they chose something. All I know is that we were given the ball and asked to bowl. According to the rules, the girl members from both the teams have to sit out for the first 4 overs. Sagar started the proceedings for our team. He stuck to our game plan which, I guess, must have been to bowl well. Maybe it was because Tarun didn't attend our team meeting when we made the extra ordinary game plan that we will bowl well. Or maybe the opposing team had sent in their spies and overheard our game plan of bowling well and made their own extraordinary counter game plan - to bat well. Whatever was the reason our team owner and bowler Tarun got thrashed all over the place the next over.
But somehow we managed to put brakes on the opposition till over number 4. I was quite extra ordinary in the field, making sure that not even a single ball crossed me to reach the boundary. That was not because not even a single ball came in my direction, it was just because I am extra ordinary.
Next was the girl's over. In came our heroine, Neha Jain a.k.a Maathe. The villainess, the girl from "The Strikers", Ambika a.k.a Ambu took guard at the wickets. Maathe had been preparing rigorously for this match for last 2 days. She made sure she had put in that extra effort to gulp down 2 more aloo parathas in addition to her exisitng quota of 5 aloo parathas inorder to get that extra energy.
Maathe gets ready to throw her first ball. Ultimate warriors had only one question in mind
"Will Maathe's ball ever reach the wickets?"
The Strikers had only one question in their minds
"Will Ambu ever be able to lift the bat"
Maathe throws. Ambu lifts the bat.
First bounce...second bounce....third bounce....
After 5 minutes
100th bounce...101st bounce....
No one had the patience to wait till the ball reached the wicket and so it was picked up midway. The ball was declared a dead ball.
Maathe had a I-knew-just-2-extra-aloo-parathas-were-not-enough look on her face. But Ultimate warriors showed true team spirit and encouraged Maathe to go on (as they had no other option - a girl's over was compulsory). Maathe finally managed to complete her 20-ball over in which 14 balls were declared dead.
Finally we finished our quota of 7 overs. The Strikers had made 53 runs. Thus our target was 54. Our opening batsmen - Kiran and Tarun. Both of them struck terror in the opponents hearts with their batting skills. The Strikers struck back by striking off Tarun stumps. Sagar, the next batsman, continued from where Tarun stopped. During the 5th over, Maathe too contributed and proved her mettle by hitting a boundary and by the beginning of the 7th over , the game was over. Ultimate warriors crushes The Strikers by 5 wickets!!!
After the celebrations of the morale boosting victory was over I returned to my room. I found Kukri in front of his computer.
"So how was the match"
"Naa it was easy. Nothing that me or my team couldn't handle"
"Cool, so how many wickets did you take"
"I didn't have to. My boys had it under control".
"Right, so in other words they didn't give you any over to bowl. Fine how many runs did you make".
"I am a middle order batsman. So you see I was supposed to come 7 down, but that situation didn't arise".
"How many players are there in the team".
"8"
"So you are the last man to bat. Great. Atleast tell me you fielded well".
"Of course I would have fielded well if the ball had come to me".
"So in short you didn't bat, you didn't bowl, you didn't field. What exactly did you do. Tell me atleast you touched the ball"
"Of course I did"
"When"
"During the drinks interval"
Update : In the 2nd match of the day Dark Knights Vs Powai Panthers, Dark Knights won by 40 runs. Tomorrow we face Powai Panthers.
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