Good Start to Twenty11

'Da Freaks were off to a winning start in 2011 and it was thanks to our bowling and fielding.

10 men: Madhavan, Mani, Fred, Sri, Balaji, Suresh, Sudarshan, Yogi, yogi's friend and Kailash. Vicky was in Sriperambudur, Raghu got into puberty (said he had a stomach ache), Goutham was asleep and hence Balaji, Jagan at Ooty. Good to see that we were almost able to pull off all 11 with all these changes and some of them last minute. Lets try and keep the last minute pull outs at nil guyz.

The match was against Hari's team sans Hari himself. Both the teams did not have a few regulars and so this match up was quite on an equal front.

We won the toss and chose to bat. Yogi's friend and Balaji opened and they had a steady start scoring 12 runs in 3 overs (another hari missed a simple catch at long on in only the second over though) but we failed to convert a good start, we never really had any momentum to the innings especially with Balaji incapable of playing other than a slog. He wasted too many deliveries and that put pressure on the other guys. Naturally it resulted in cheap wickets. Yogi, Sudarshan and Fred never really got going. We were 39 in 10 overs and that is when Balaji got run out, not his fault he had a bye in the name of Suresh and that kind of looked like a planned one, though he never agreed. Anyway his wicket helped as Sridhar, myself and Mani traded some blows in the last 4 overs to end our innings at 63 off 14 overs. Opposition's bowling never really had any bite neither did our batting.

Suresh and Sridhar opened the bowling for us. We got that extra fielder courtesy Sudarshan. Our bowling though looked rusty at the beginning found line, length and good rythmn soon enough. There is nothing much to talk about their innings as they never looked like chasing, struggling for runs. Suresh got a couple of wickets in his second, Yogi got three in his first as we kind of ran through their line up to leave them short of about 12-15 runs. Our ground fielding looked good and it resulted in a couple of run outs as well.

Our overall performance on the field trying to save the match was encouraging and satisfying.

To sum it up, we won this match because of Vicky. Why? He didn't play!! :) :p (Sorry dude, every one wanted me to write this, every one)

Hope to have a full strength squad next week with Vicky and Raghu back. Good start to 2011 overall. Keep up the spirit.

Cheers,
Madhavan for 'Da Freaks