Report from the match against Rutgers
~Aravind Vijayaraghavan
Just when we thought our performance had reached its abysmal low, we out-shame ourselves. It was quite pathetic this past Sunday; how we managed to snatch defeat form the jaws of victory.
In stark contrast to the previous match, we reached Rutgers with four keepers. For the first time in four years Aravind L played a match where he didn’t keep wickets. But he made up for it with 3 fine catches. RPI struck early with Rahul M doing the damage with some aggressive fast bowling. Our bowlers bowled a tight and disciplined line and got rewards. And than, the unbelievable happened. Channa got the ball in hand, and things just fell apart for Rutgers. While Channa stuck to a flawless line and length, the Rutgers batsmen made more silly blunders than I have done in all my math exams put together. Channa’s policy was simple, you miss, I hit. And it worked like a charm; to hand him is first five-wicket haul, the rewards for discipline. Rahul bowled a beautiful slower one towards the end; it was so slow, the batsman had enough time to swing, miss and have his lunch before the ball hit the stumps. Rutgers was bowled out for 123 in 20 overs and we were all set to break our miserable loosing streak in away games.
That was until our batsmen decided to return Rutgers the favor. If you can bat badly, we can bat worse, they said. And we bowled ourselves out for a cheap 60 odd runs; in the same 20 overs it took Rutgers to score 123. Once again, our weakness against decent pace bowling was exposed. Top scorer, extras; with 27 of them in our 60 run total. Four top order ducks added the required insult to injury. The only positive outcome of the match was newcomer Amithab, who displayed tremendous potential. If we keep this batting performance up, I don’t see how we plan to defend our CCL championship. We need to pull up our sox guys; at this rate we are going to be the laughing stock of every university in these parts.
We don’t have any games scheduled for this weekend, but we will have practice on Thursday and one Saturday. If you are going to be in Troy over the weekend, please do turn up and practice. Remember, it’s a knock out tourney; you get to make only one mistake.