The Prologue

The urge to write this post has been derived from the most recent India-Pakistan match, held on last Friday, as part of the ongoing T20 World Cup. I do not wish to review it, or put it my *expert* comments on the same. But the match reminded me of another match that was played about 10 odd years ago.

Since I want to describe the incident in its true detail, I have decided to split it into 3 parts :-).

Disclaimer:

This story is *not* a figment of my imagination. All characters and incidents in this story are real (I have put in links to people's orkut profiles wherever possible), and there is no question about the characters having any resemblance to characters living or dead, since as I said, all this is true !!

The Prologue:

Mumbai, about 10 odd years ago. There is a craze in Mumbai for under-arm cricket, which is for some reason, looked down upon by the rest of India (as far as I have known). They have tournaments (under lights as well, nowadays) at various levels of expertise. I will not get into the rules of the game, but believe me when I tell you, it requires the exact same set of skills you need to do well at over-arm cricket, and a lot more !!

We (the team of our building) had been a bunch of underdogs for the last 2-3 years that we'd been participating, but this year we were actually well prepared and kind of looked upon as a strong contender by the other teams. We called ourselves "Six Squares" (the number of our building was 36 :-p). In fact, we were so well prepared, that we had enough people to form 2 teams of our own - namely 36A, comprising of the senior members (though all were below 16, cause it was a U-16 event), and 36B, comprising of the relatively junior (read kachchaa) players.

Another interesting fact, was that the captains of both our teams, were brothers. And also the junior-most members of the respective teams, meaning that all strategic decisions were made by everybody other than the captain, and if things were to go wrong, the captain would be the one to blame :-). Newyz, each team comprsed of 8 players. I don't think I remember the composition of the teams exactly, but here is what I recollect:

36A - Akhil (c), Arun, Ajith, Lovely, Pathak, Takla, Amit, Chikara
36B - Abhishek (c), Mota, Bantu, Pranav, Alan, Guy from Ajith's building, Nalwaya, Varun

Both teams started off well. 36A did very well (as expected), and 36B did exceptionally well, mainly because of the bowling exploits of their captain, arguably the most prodigious under-arm leg-spinner in the tournament, and some high spirited team management by Mota.

Both teams registered very crucial (and memorable) wins in their respective league matches, which were supposed to be followed by the Semis.
36A got the better of 35, arch rivals, seperated by just a wall (complete with India-Pakistan like hostility, on and off the field. We, of course, were India :-)). 35 had players like Gaggu, Zaid, Lotsy, etc. who were part of their over-arm teams as well, which had no age-limit. We, for that matter, also were part of our over-arm team, but that was because none of the seniors from our building were ever interested (which is why we never took part in the over-arm tournament :-p). I think I would attribute that win to some excellent batting by Lovely and Arun, and a blinder of a catch that Ajith took, to dismiss Gaggu. We were heroes when we went back to the building in the break :-D
36B, not to left behind, and riding on luck big time, got the better out of 47, who called themselves the "Fighting Tigers". They were very strong contenders themselves, with Deepak as the captain, and Amit (tailor) as the hard-hitting all-rounder. 36B actually won because of Nalwaya's hanuman style hitting, and more importantly a second last ball 6 hit by the guy from Ajth's building, which travelled all along the ground at a height of not more than 6 inches.

The camaraderie between both our teams uptill this point in the tournament had been enviable, with the seniors guiding the game plan of the juniors, and the juniors shouting their hearts out to support the seniors. And then it dawned upon the 16 involved. The second semi-final to be played was 36A Vs. 36B !!!!!