This Losing Streak has Gotta Stop

Alfonso is witnessing a barrage of tournaments these days and therefore Gopalapuram ground will now speak of our folk lore. Today's match was against the Skippers team. 'Da Freaks for the day were myself, mani, vicky, freddie, kailash, sridhar, jagan, yogi, sudarshan, suresh and ram.

We lost the toss and we were to chase down their score. Opening the bowling was Sridhar and Ram, whose inclusion as an opening bowler I thought was questionable. But both of them did a good job in their opening over, picking up wickets in the process. Mani was one change in the third over itself and that was a smart move to keep the bowlers fresh and give ourselves more possibilities to take more wickets. But as it always happens, we lose out on our middle and end overs. Vicky's only over cost him about 10 runs but he produced a beauty to take Saravana's wicket, caught and bowled. Mani was not effective today as he gave away awful lot of runs including a straight six. The field placements was a lot to be desired too as there were a lot of easy twos. We need to find a way to plug the gap correctly. For the last 4 overs, I stood in the deep, something I liked a lot more than standing closer. Lets be honest, I do not have very sharp reflex and so I require that extra bit of time. Also I do possess a-not-so-bad arm, so this is something I think I should do in future games as well, it will be tougher but ok. Jagan's last two overs were really good as he picked up a couple of wickets but the problem was that every one was giving away at least 3 bad balls in an over and it costed double that. End of the first half we were faced with chasing a massive score of 99 runs in 14 overs.

We started our chase with Suresh and Yogi, both of whom progressed well and scored 21 in 3 overs. But after that we started losing wickets in a heap with Vicky, Ram and Yogi getting out within a period of three overs. Run outs are the highest. We need to curtail getting run out. After a period of brief shots and in-between wickets, we scored 52 in 10 overs still needing 47 in 4. When Freddie got out, I shared the crease with Sudarshan, just the second ball, he got out caught. Sridhar joined in and we started scoring runs more freely. But Sridhar gave away a maiden in the 12th over and that put the pressure on us more as we had to score 28 in 2 overs. Sri got out in the 13th over but we managed 11 runs off it because of some brilliant running between Ram (running for me) and Jagan. But with 17 needing off the last over, we managed to get only 3 and lost Jagan and Mani in the process. That is how we ended up with just 85. I was told that I scored around 22 runs but everyone knows that they deserve a better consistency from me and hopefully this is a start of something good.

We need to arrest the losing streak. So far it has not demoralized anyone as we are still raring to go as always but we need a win sooner.

Cheers,
Madhavan
for 'Da Freaks