What an amazing victory by our team (Royal College of Surgeons) v/s EDF at Eltham on 26th July 2009. I will remember this day for a bit long time wonderful day with a great excitement of sport.
Early in the morning, I was so scared to loose again with the same team.Last year, the same team has crushed us very badly. In that game, half of our team were playing cricket first time and unfortunately we lost the toss and with the help of extra run generously given by our bowler bowled wide deliveries crossing the boundary in number of times. At the end, I turned up bowled 14 overs as no one else can bowl without giving extra run.
EDF score 293 in 40 overs. I had over expectation from our team that, we will win the game if we able to survive till 40 overs. We start our inning and within couple of overs two wicket were down. I went for batting and scored 26 runs which was highest run in our team and got caught on Mid off. After my wicket no one could survive to give fight back to them and we ended up with 98 all out. What a shame for us !
Since that defeat, we aimed to improve our game for next season. We went for net practice number of times at Oval cricket ground and we had couple of field session at Regents Park’s ground. After hard work, we feel that our game is competitive and we all were so confident that, this time we can fight back to EDF.
26th July, the day we all eagerly waited for, it was bit scary and little excited as, we don’t want to loose again. We selected decent team with batting order from very less options.
We lost the toss, Oh God!! not again, please keep your holy hand on us to win this game. Greg and Myself start the first bowling spell. First delivery of Greg was fabulous, Opener of EDF get bowled which is very helpful for us as they got themselves in pressure. After first spell, Jamie and James bowled which was quite expansive for us as they are quite medium pace sort pitch bowlers. Now it was time for Matt and Ian to bowled and both done very well. Last 10 over remaining and they were planning to attack us but we had plan to come back with tight spell on last spell. Greg and Myself introduced in bowling. With no wicket on my first spell I was so hungry to get wicket and I start bowling with all my pace and you know what?? in the second ball I got wicket….. new batsman on the field. I had intention to bowled yorker but didn’t mange to get it. Ball became full toss on wicket player miss the ball and howzzat, got another wicket. I did swing like Soyeb Akhtar. It was a wonderful moment of the day. We ended up with 163-8 in 40 overs. I bowled 7 overs with 2 maiden overs with only 17 runs. I though and infact everyone of us were thinking that we did quite well in bowling side.
It’s batting time for us now. Jaime and Ian had opened up batting for us. Ian hit boundary on first ball which was quite impressive. Jamie didn’t do well, missed couple of deliveries and then got out on duck. Same thing happened with Greg he got out in next the over. It was time for me to get on the field. I played couples of nice shot and quickly I had scored 25 run. In bad shot selection I got caught on Mid On. I was so tense that this is it. we were loosing again as I was not sure about my other team mates could survive. The Score was 63-3, 101 runs needed to win. Ian and Matt performed extremely well, both were quite lucky as fielding team dropped couple of catches. At the end, our team survived to make 164 without loosing any more wickets. Ian did quite well and score 83 not out with two sixes.
It was time for celebration, there were barbecues from EDF. Most of EDF members didn’t stayed for it though . Jamie’s partner was doing scoring for us. Statically ‘Man of the Match’ awarded to me for my contributions in bowling and batting. It was really nice day for all of us.
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