TCC lost to CCC by 33 runs in their 7th match of the 2004 season played at Shiloh. It was a match that should have been comfortably won, but that was not to be. TCC would like to thank Mr. Dave Kumar for umpiring the game.

Ravi lost his first toss of the season and as expected CCC chose to bat given the hot and humid day that it was going to be with temperatures hovering in the mid 90s. Ahmed and Fabian opened for CCC and carried the score to 7 when Ahmed was caught plumb in front of the wicket off Aravind for 4. Yogi didn’t last long and was caught by yours truly at midwicket when he miscued a pull off Aravind making it 2/9. Fabian should have been dismissed right-away had Sundar not made a hash of an easy return catch. Fortunately, Fabian didn’t take advantage of that life and was splendidly caught by TCC’s “safe deposit box” oops Rajesh U. at deepish mid off in Sundar’s next over. Sanjay Pal was well-caught at cover by Ravi and Bejoy was sheepishly run out thanks to Aravind’s presence of mind in knocking the ball back to Samir after the ball had brushed off Bejoy’s pads and gone just behind the keeper. Earlier, similar to the OCC match, Sundar missed out on a hatrick yet again. Having dismissed Fabian and Sanjay off consecutive deliveries, he had Bejoy hopelessly in front, but the umpire decided that it was not out. Bejoy didn’t ride his luck too far anyway. In essence, we had CCC reeling at 5/33 off 11.3 overs. Arun, one of CCC’s very good allrounders walked in. Shankar and Arun took the score to 68 off 17.4 overs when Nataraj had Shankar caught at deep mid-wicket by Shibu. TCC was jubiliant with CCC collapsing to a pathetic 6/68. Little did we realize that we would be paying a very high price for being complacent and not cleaning up CCC’s tail. Arun and Pranav went about building a superb partnership of 50 runs in just 5 overs, thanks to some pedestrian bowling from us. Aravind was brought back into the attack to stem the flow of runs and he immediately cleaned up Pranav. Vijay Kumar, a pinch hitter for CCC teamed up with Arun and sent TCC on a leather hunt. 70 runs came off just 6 overs! Earlier, Vijay K. was thrilled to see Ravi drop a sitter at deep mid-wicket off a disappointed Aravind when he had made only a few runs. He made us pay for that lapse by making 39 runs off just 17 balls. Arun was out for a breezy 71 off 54 balls caught by Sundar off Paddy. He had had his slice of luck when the umpire negated a confident leg-before shout off Paddy and the ball fell quite a few times in no man’s land. The ball decided to follow Ravi and Vijay K. was finally caught on the deep mid-wicket fence. Ronnie’s furniture was rearranged by Aravind who finished with his first 5-for of the season while Sundar had 2 scalps. I should say that Raajeev bowled magnificently during his 4-over spell and kept the batsmen at bay. CCC had been allowed back into the game and they had added a whopping 150 runs off 15 overs and were all out for 203.

After breaking for 25 minutes for lunch, Ravi and Samir opened the proceedings for TCC’s chase. Arun bowled a maiden over to Ravi and Samir was caught off the very first ball he faced, mistiming a gentle cover drive. Fabian picked up the ball inches off the ground and Vijay K. had drawn the first blood for CCC. Shibu, who hadn’t been in the best of forms lately seemed to be meddling the ball well, but just when things seemed to be cruising along, he was caught plumb in front to Arun’s bread and butter ball, the in-swinger. Aravind was unlucky to get a snorter the first delivery he faced and the ball kissed his gloves and carried safely to Sanjay who took a regulation catch. TCC were 3/19. I walked in knowing that the team needed a good partnership to win the game. At the other end, Ravi a.k.a “Jayasuriya” played a couple of exquisite flicks and drives that prompted even the opposition to applaud. Just when things were getting back to normal, Ajai tempted me to go for the pull off a short ball. I responded, but Yogi lunged forward at backward square-leg and made a good catch and we were 4/33. Sundar a.k.a “Gundappa” and Ravi slowly started accumulating runs and took us to 67 when Shankar, CCC’s offie / skipper drew Ravi out of the crease and bowled him all ends up when the batsman tried to flick. Ravi seemed determined to carry TCC all the way, but he had been foxed. Sundar played a cameo with awesome support from Rajesh at the other end and the duo added 37 runs when Sundar was caught on the deep square-leg fence by Ahmed off Shankar for a well-compiled 32. Rajesh seemed to be batting out his skin driving and pulling with panache and found an able ally in Paddy. CCC seemed to be in a spot of bother not able to contain Rajesh. We needed 63 off 6 overs and we were confident that we could pull it off. Not to make excuses for our defeats, IMHO, TCC has been very unlucky as far as umpiring goes and this match was no exception either. At a crucial juncture, Rajesh was unfortunately declared caught behind for a brave 41 when the ball clearly seemed to have brushed his thigh pad on its way to the keeper off Arun. That seemed to signal the end for us ‘cos had he stuck around for some more time, we may have snatched an improbable victory. Paddy chipped in with a useful 15 while Nataraj made 10. Uchil was the last man out and we were all out for 170. Arun Tholudur grabbed 4 wickets and proved to be a thorn in the flesh for TCC. He was the obvious choice for MoM given his gritty all-round performance. Even in the face of back-to-back defeats, we have to still remain positive since we have 5 more games in the preliminary phase. Just a matter of time before we get back to our winning ways!