FINALLY A BIG ONE

It took me 29 years and numerous attempts to achieve this. I cannot recall the total number of tournaments I might have played in but I can clearly remember that at least at 3 occasions, I faltered at the last step.

The first time, it happened in my first year of engineering. We had a chance to create history by being the first First Year class to win the college championship. We were overwhelmed by the occasion and lost the game miserably.

The second time, we could have defeated the reigning champions and won the Infy championship. We played very well in the first half, but were very tired and were overpowered by the other side.

The third time was last year in the local 20-20 tournament when one person's brutal innings kept us away from the trophy. Sheer brutal power from 1 person crashed our party.

But not this time. This time our team was undefeated in the tournament. We were not even challenged in any games, except the semi-finals (more about the SF below). All our games until the semis were clearly one-sided.

In the semi, we were pitted against a very strong KMCC team which had manhandled us in the regular season. Plus, this time they had imported a very good player just for this match. We started badly and had lost 5 wickets for less than 20 runs. 3 batsmen played very well to push us to 126. They started very well and were 80/3 in 10 overs. Needed 47 in 10 overs with 7 wickets in hand. We never gave up, fought very hard and choked them out. After needing 6 runs off 2 overs with 4 wickets in hand, we tied the game. Then there was a bowl-out (Yes!!!). And how can a Indian team lose to a Pakistan team in a bowl out. We kept the tradition alive ;-) and won the bowl out to go to the finals.

In the finals, we steamrolled a young (and a very good) NCSU team and emerged as the tournament champions. Our bowlers were challenged by each other. Our batsmen competed against one another. The targets was to better our previous best performance. No one could have said that we did not deserve to win.

This is the first tournament victory for me and the fact that wifey was there made it even special.