We won the finals of our office cricket tournament - NPL on Sunday! With this win, we have won the tournament 3 out of 5 times. This is the maximum number of times any team has won the tournament. Ironically this was also when we were playing without many of our star players..which makes the win even more special.
However, all did not go well for us. On Saturday, one of our team member met with an accident while coming to the ground. Although she is out of danger but she suffered major injuries on her face. She was in the ICU for a day before the CT Scans and X-Rays suggested that there were no internal injuries. Anyways, lets hope for a speedy recovery for her. It was shocking for us to see her in the condition she was in. Hospitals are always a very depressing place to be in and Saturday left us all in no mood of playing the game. At the same time, we all really wanted to win this one for her.
Sunday began with us winning the toss for a change and electing to field. Our opposition started off steadily with no major fireworks. After the first wicket fell, Piyush - their best player and a monstrous hitter of the ball came in. However, Himanshu - our bowler was in no mood to relent. He bowled an excellent over..every ball right at the block hole. Under pressure after soo many dots, Piyush went for a sneaky single but found himself stranded midway. The ball was quickly collected by our keeper Deepak and he hit the stumps directly. We all were ecstatic. However, after that, things dint go as per plan. I dunno if it was the heat or our complacency or a combination of both, the second spell of our bowlers (including me) was a nightmare. We gave away soo many extras and misfields that we suddenly found our opposition back in the game. They reached 98 in 12 overs...which was a very competitive total.
We started off badly. Our opener Himanshu got out after trying to heave a 6 in the very first over. We all got really nervous after that start. However he was replaced by another Himanshu who was in a destructive mood. He went berserk right from the second over itself. He hit 2 sixes and 2 fours to score 20 off the second over. He continued the blitzkrieg clearing the boundary at will before he got out at 33 off just 13 balls. He demoralized the bowlers and made the run rate look like a joke. He provided us with such a big cushion, that all we had to do was to take the singles and get the occasional boundary. Our captain Deepak did just that. He rotated the strike beautifully and made sure the bad balls were dispatched. We reached the target in the second ball of the last over with a huge 6 from Nirmal. He finished it off in style. We won it with 5 wickets remaining. We all ran on the field to celebrate and carried Deepak on our shoulders. There were some nice war of words going on between us since the last week...esp after they defeated us in one of the league matches. The atmosphere was full of emotions running high on the field.
Wow!..what an awesome day it was. Winning always feels great..and this one was special. This one was for you Gunjan! Get well soon and let's party.
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