From left-to-right, back-to-front: Karan Gupta (White Overalls), Lalit Gupta, Varun Jaisia (Black Jersey), Sandeep Kharab, Kinshuk Sunil (Myself with Stump in hand), Nitin Gautam (White/Blue T Shirt), Raghunandan Saraf (Orange Tee), Abhish Negi (Green Tee), Manish Kumar (White Overalls), Mohnish (Sprawled), Karan Sharma (Team India Tee)
What was a very exciting match (though turned, sorta, one-sided midway the second innings) Team GBO showed a dedicated and professional behaviour on the field. Let me capture the moments for the people who missed the match.
After the toss, Team GBO’s captain Lalit Gupta chose to bat first. The right tone for the whole match was set by the GBO openers – Lalit Gupta and Karan Sharma, who played a brilliant knock and built a strong opening partnership of about 124 runs in 13 overs. Lalit was the first wicket to fall with an individual score of 49 (rather unfortunate to miss out a half-century) including 2 sixes and about 7-8 boundaries. The opening partnership was filled with a barrage of boundaries and sixes by both Lalit and Karan who were joyfully hugged by our dear Gupta after every shot (somehow the security guards were amiss).
The next to follow was Karan Sharma who hit a brilliant knock of 70 runs (1×6s, abt 11×4s). With only three overs to go the following batsmen went for pinch-hitting with Varun, Nitin, Gupta and our best bowler Sandeep.
With a total of 154 in 16 overs, Team GBO set a formidable score for their opponents. The target was high but not unattainable.
With the beginning of the second innings, two of the opposition’s good batsmen came to bat one of which was a famous Kushal, famous for hitting centuries in such intra – college matches. The first over by Sandeep (famous as GBO’s Goli Bowler throughout SRCC, for his fast-paced, tight bowling) conceded only 4 runs and brought the opposition to the reality of what Team GBO really is. The next over by our dearest Negi destroyed the very foundations of our opponents by his tight bowling. The famous Kushal was caught out by Sandeep on one of Negi’s beautiful delivery for a lowly single-digit score. Sandeep continued to pound the opposition batsmen with the bowling he is famous for. It was Negi who struck again, bowling out the next batsmen, again on a single-digit score. Fear was only one emotion the opposition felt.
The new batsmen Karthik was again a famed SRCC cricket player, who held the reins of the opposition batting. Together for the third wicket they scored a partnership of about 50 runs and the total score was about 80 when our Gupta struck with a vengeance and our dear Doga Paaji (aka Varun) caught a splendid catch on the mid-wicket with sharp reflexes. In between, we saw some really nice fielding from our youthful and agile Negi and Raghu.. (Come on, Raghu!)
After that, the opposition innings crumbled. The next batsman was run out by Lalit through a timely pass by Karan Gupta in an Abhish Negi over. All in all the opposition needed to score 54 runs from 3 overs to win all due to some dedicated bowling by Sandeep, Abhish, Karan Sharma, Gupta, Manish and Nitin. Then our Nitin and Doga Paaji bowled two good overs and the opposition needed to score another 38 overs from a single over.
Already having won the match the over was shared by two budding, talented bowlers – Monish and Myself. After scoring a boundary of my ball, the match ended on cue with Team GBO registering a thrilling win over their rivals with them falling short by 34 runs.
What followed was a scene of euphoric celebration where Team GBO huddled and bounced, pranced around, screamed and yelled, showered Coca Cola (desi champagne) on each other.
All Hail The Champs!
