Result: Zups won by 115 runs
What do you do when you plan and prepare for weeks together for your big day of face-off, but you are defeated so mercilessly by the opposition that you wonder if anything you would have ever done would have made any difference to the outcome? Something similar happened today, when we faced Zups in our crucial. Before the match, we felt we were in our peak form. We had analyzed the opposition minutely, planned our strategies and moves for three whole weeks, and to top it all, had won a practice match for the first time. The players who missed the last match came back for this match. The team arrived at the venue and did a warm-up for one hour before the match. The match started half an hour late, courtesy the tardiness of the umpire. Zups won the toss and opted to bat first. That delighted us to no end, since most of us felt that out best chance was in batting second. Zups’ openers had been in tremendous form, and their middle order did not look as strong. In this match, Zups retained one of the openers and sent the other one to the number 4 spot. And in hindsight, it proved to be a wonderful move! We got our first success in the first over itself, when the newly sent opener was runout due to a misunderstanding. The match could have hardly gone on to a better start for us. The opener and the number 3 batsman stayed at the wicket, looking for singles. While the opener (Shiva) punished anything short or full or on the leg side, the number three batsman played the perfect supporting role at the other end. Shiva played a flawless inning, and his partner provided him whatever support he needed. When refreshments break was taken after 12 overs, Zups had made 56/1. Zups continued in this mode till the 20th over to reach 80/1, when Shiva was bowled to our delight. Shiva left before he could have launched an attack in the slog overs, and was replaced by the same person who opened with him in the previous matches. What followed thereafter can only be described as a blitzkrieg. Both the men tried to hit every ball for the maximum and ran for everything,as sixes poured and runs rained. Zups finished with 138 in their 25 overs, leaving us a target of 139 in 25 overs at 5.6 runs/over. If the Zups’ batting was awesome, its bowling and fielding were mind-blowing. The bowlers bowled the perfect line and the fielders did not give anything away. As in their previous matches, the opening bowlers bowled a good line and length and got the initial breakthroughs and their star bowler (Sunila) came to eat the middle order and drink the tail. Out entire batting was wrapped up in 13 overs for a meager 23 runs. Eight batsmen could not open their accounts today. We ended with our heaviest defeat and a bout of introspection. The few good things to take away from the match: 1. The strategy to bring a very good bowler at the end almost proved effective as it kept the Zups runrate in check till the 20th over. 2. The captain bowling Yorker length deliveries to prevent the batsmen from capitalizing on his slow speed was pretty intelligent stuff. 3. The fielding did not go haywire in the slog overs when runs rained everywhere. The fact that the fielders and bowlers kept their cool in the final stages of Zups’ innings to effect a couple of run-outs was appreciable A few learnings from the match: 1. The importance of getting wickets at regular intervals and preventing partnerships has been drilled into our minds. 2. The need to appeal for everything that might be close has been realized. There was a particular instance when the bowler and the Wicket-keeper thought that the ball was going down the leg side. To our pain, the umpire thought it was plumb. To our distress, this happened right at the start of Zups’ second wicket partnership. 3. There is a need to identify one person who will keep wickets during the slog overs. This person should be given some practice to hit stumps from the close range. Right now, we decide the wicket keeper for the match right before the start of the match. 4. There were two schools of thought within the team on how to approach the target. One school wanted the openers to play off the first few overs, while the other school demanded an attack from the openers. Could we have planned earlier on what to do in such a situation? 5. A particular player sparked an endless chain of emails before the match by remarking his unhappiness at his batting position. Since this has been a repeated incident,we should see how it is possible to involve more people and ideally everyone in deciding the team line-up and batting and bowling orders for the match. We should all also make an attempt to see the constraints that have prevented such practice so far. 6. Lastly, there are some questions worth thinking about for future: Could we have done something to break the concentration of the batsmen when they were building the huge partnership? Could we have tried sledging at them? Could we try developing some plan for such situations when two batsmen start building a partnership against us. Two such partnerships in the last two matches have taken the matches away from us. 5. Lastly, it has been realized that we are devoting too much energy into the planning for cricket matches and not receiving enough returns for it. Therefore, it has been decided to plan cricket for winning as well as for fun. Let’s hope we succeed in both !!! It is important for us to realize that we can still go far in this tournament. We did not do many things wrong today, but were beaten by a team at a higher level of skill and getting some good strokes of luck today. Zups is one of the strongest teams in this tournament. And the fact that we came close to defeating DDCC, who in turn defeated Zups earlier in this tournament tells that we are much better than what the score sheet said so. So, let’s take the lessons from today and prepare for Saturday’s match against Alpha.
Comment of the match : "One of us to the umpire during the refreshments break: “Yaar, Shiva ko out dene ka kya lega?” Umpire: “Appeal" "