KPL Day 5 - Execution of a perfect plan

Day 5 - as usual had to cut short my sleep and get by at 6:30 am to "report" at the ground for our "practise" match against Scorpions. It was a practise match because we have already qualified for the semis. We had taken a decision the previous day that we will stick to the following strategy -

"Play our worst game, make the other teams think that we can easily be pushed over and thus make them over confident during the semi final match".

Though others will find it very hard to stick to the game plan, it will be a cake walk for me since it comes naturally to me. But finally we did manage to execute the script to perfection. Here's how.

After winning the toss, we elected to ball. Sagar, though he struggled to stick to our team plan, he did manage to put up a credible performance and managed to give away 15 odd runs, though the team expected him to give atleast 20 runs away. Uday came in next and did his part well. The opponents were well in sight of a 100+ runs even though only 2 overs were done.

Next came in Tarun. We had high expectations from him. But he screwed up our plan!!! He gave only 10 runs!!! Sagar was desperate. The team plan was going haywire. He needed someone trustworthy to make sure the team plan is executed perfectly. He knew he could depend on only one person for this. He turned to me.

"Jaa mere sher, dikha tera jalwa"

And thus started my over of the tournament.

1st ball....6...

2nd ball...4...

Sagar  started dancing with joy.

3rd ball....6 jaane waala tha...but unluckily caught at the boundary...

Sagar stopped dancing.

4th ball...dot ball.

Sagar stared at me. He had a "don't-let-me-down" look on his face. I gave him a "mei-hoo-na" look back.

5th ball...1...Smoke started coming from Sagar's ears...his face turned red.

6th ball...again caught and batsman out...Sagar went mad and started pulling out his own hair.

I let Sagar down. Only 11 runs and on top of that 2 wickets also.

Next over Kiran came in for bowling. The seasoned bowler bowled the right line and length and got thrashed all over. Smile returned back to Sagar's face.

He gave the last over to Guru.

First 4 balls dot balls. Sagar came in running and had a chat with him .
Sure enough it had the desired effect.
Next 2 balls - 6,4.

Thus the Scorpions scored 80 - which was 20 short of our expectations, but nevertheless we were fine with it.

It was easier than expected to stick to our plan when it came to batting...

Tarun opened, within 2 balls he was back.
Next was Sagar.
He went, he saw, they conquered, he came back...really fast.

Uday and Kiran tried their best, but somehow was not getting out too quickly.

When it was the girl's over, Maate too chipped in with her contribution. In KPL, the rule is for every wide ball the batting team gets +2 runs and everytime the bats-girl gets out, 2 runs are deducated from the batting team.

The bowler at the other end was Prajakta aka Motu, who apparently claims that she was the college cricket captain in her Btech days (government sources inform me that there was never a girls' cricket team in the history of that college, but let's leave that aside for the time being).

Thus whenever Motu bowled a wide delivery, Maate compensated by getting out the next ball.

Motu bowls wide Maate gets out,
Motu wide Maate out....wide,out...wide,out

Thus Maate successfully and skilfully batted through to make it a maiden over.

Maate returned to the pavilion to a standing ovation by our team members. The plan was working great.

Needless to say, by the time we ended the innings, we not only lost by 30 runs, but ensured that all of us got out. Whew it is really hard to make one's team plan work, but in the end we did it.