How to win a cricket match

It is not easy to win a match against a team you have already lost to. But it sure is fun to do it and celebrate later!

We (the West Bay team) had already lost the first game to the East Bay team last month. Many of us had not played cricket in many years. We were very rusty. We only had one practice session the day before the match. We lost miserably.

Yesterday we played the second match. This time around we were more prepared – either that or the other team was more overconfident. We had practiced at least 3 times after the last match. And we were ready to execute our plan.

As with all plans, when the game started, everything went awry and we had to resort to Agile planning. We had to re-plan at the end of every over. We won the toss and elected to bat first. The pitch was very bad and the bounce was intolerably uneven.

We lost our first few wickets very soon. By the time we got to 7 overs (in a 20 over match) we had lost more than half our good batsmen. I was fourth down and decided to stick it out to the end even if we did not score a lot of runs. Thanks to the bad bounce we got a lot of extras. But for the same reason we gave away a lot of extras as well, eventually – again our plan not cooperating.

Anyway, we stabilized our batting and stayed put till the 14th over. Then we went on a roll and scored about half our total score in the last 6 overs. At the end of our innings we had a decent and defend-able score. They needed 116 runs to win. Close to 6 runs per over. My initial target was 7 runs per over. Oh well, may be in the next match.

It was now our turn to bowl. We all found it very difficult to control the extras. But we kept at it. At 13 overs they had a decent run-rate, always having maintained the required run rate. We had 7 overs left to bowl and only 6 overs possible from the best bowlers. They still had good batsmen left.

Each and every over was nerve-wracking. We had to decide who should bowl at the end of every over depending on who was on strike and when to deploy the not-the-best bowler.

Any way, we contained them and at the last over they needed 17 runs to win. By then their good batsmen were gone. Unless they hit 3 sixers there was no way they were going to win – because we positioned our fielders in such a way as to allow only ones and twos.

Whew! We finally won by more than 10 runs.

When I got home, I did not even have to strength to check my email. I went straight to bed! Thank god I carpooled, so my friend was able to drive me home. My muscles are aching all over. I’m sure the situation is the same for all my team mates. But hey, this temporary ache and pain is well worth the sweet taste of victory!