The Great Cliched Weekend

So what is the biggest cliche in cricket? Why its
the hoary old "The game is never over till the
last ball is bowled", of course. Along with
"It's a game of glorious uncertainties".
Unoriginal stuff, no doubt - and it makes me
wince every time I hear yet another boring
international commentator say it.

And yet...sometimes things happen that make
you wonder if those really arent the only things
you *can* say. This weekend was one of those
times - I was involved (and around) a total
of 3 games this weekend, and ALL of them
fit the above cliches to a T.

The first was a game I was next door to -
the Wildcats against the Bears at Washington
Park, as big a Houdini-act as the league has
seen in many a year. The reigning champions
started their title-defense solidly enough,
moving to 70 for 3, before things went
horribly wrong. Faisal broke through twice
in quick succession, Hammad claimed a couple
with his leggies, Arif ran through the
tail in an inspired spell of 4 wickets in
three-and-a-half overs, and the champions
were down and out at 124 allout. The script
went according to plan as the
Bears began their chase - they advanced
serenly to 91/3 by the 20-over break, with
the amazing veteran Humayun Mirza set
solidly at 41*.

And then the first of those Glorious Uncertainties
of our Cliched Weekend kicked in. A wicket
was claimed with the first ball after the
break, another with the first ball of the
next over, and an improbable fightback
had begun. When Hammad was consumed by
Nikhil and Salman holed out to Ramji, the
cat was truly set among the pigeons. The
Bears crumbled under the sustained (and by
now almost patented) Wildcat pressure, and
when lastman Faisal was finally runout (by
half the length of the pitch), the Wildcats
had Escaped to Victory in the improbable
manner usually envisaged only by the
ultra-sappy Hollywood (or Bollywood) writers.
They had won a quite ridiculous game of
cricket by 5 runs, as the Bears contrived to
lose 7 for 28 with the game on the line.
Satish and Nikhil had bowling unchanged and
done all the damage after the break, ending
with 4 and 3 wickets apiece.

While these crazy things were happening on
Ground 4, I was on Ground 3 busy watching
some more craziness first-hand. The Jaguars
had batted first and received varied
contributions in their innings - 27 from RP
and 30s from Kalyan and Harshad, which took
them up to 191 against a good-looking
Continental attack. When Continental chased,
veteran Hafeez took on the Jaguar bowlers
with gusto, and Continental were in command
at 108/2 at the 20 over break.

However, once again the break started the
craziness. Hafeez fell for an excellent 65,
and Continental crumbled, losing 5 for 38
to be reduced to 145/7. Iftekar and Zeeshan
hadnt given up, however, and they launched
a brave counter-attack for the 8th wicket
and reducing the target to only 10 required
off the last 3 overs before Zeeshan went for
one shot too many and holed out. Number 10
Sandeep played a couple of crisp shots,
however, and the target was down to 4 runs
to win off 8 balls. But there was one final twist
left in the tail however, and Harshad produced
it - he consumed Sandeep caught behind, and
clean bowled the last-man second ball to end
it! The Jaguars had won by the wafer-thin
margin of 3 runs, with poor Iftekar stranded
with an unbeaten 21 at the other end - and
with 7 balls still left to play!

After bearing witness to such craziness on
Saturday, (when games in Washington Park had
been decided by an average of 4 runs per game :-)
I thought Sunday might be a little
more ordinary as I headed to Peoria for what
I thought was the Game of the Week in Division
Two. Peoria CC, with 8 players who ended
the regular season as #3 seed in Division One
last year with Rivercity before leaving to
form their own team, were playing last year's
Regular Season Champions IIT. The game took
place at the excellent new Peoria CC facility -
the first-ever game at the ground which has
a brand-new pitch (complete with brand-new
astroturf), and a sort of mess-hall 50 yards
away with lunch-time seating, excellent bathroom
facilities, and even the capability (if advance
warning is given) of having burgers and dogs
prepared on a grill by cafetaria staff! With
a consistently strong breeze from the river
a half-mile away, it looks like it will be
a most pleasant place to play cricket.

The game began with Peoria CC playing like
the first-division team they basically were
last season - an excellent bowling effort
to start, throttling the IIT batting. Their
only blemish was the number of wides conceded
as they failed to control the copious amounts
of swing their pacemen obtained - but still,
they reduced IIT to 57/7 a couple of overs
after break, and it looked to be a very quick
day in prospect.

What IIT CC has always had, however, is a sort
of bulldog fighting spirit, a kind of cussed
refusal to give up on a game. Rohit, Mihir
and Pallav combined to put up a remarkable
101/1 in the remaining 17 overs, and IIT made
it all the way up to 158/8 by the end of their
40 overs, a quite outstanding effort. They
now had something to bowl at, something that
had looked very unlikely only an hour earlier.

Peoria CC made light work of it at the start
however - aided by a couple of missed slip
catches and some clean and bludgeoning hits
by Kiran, they marched to 83/1 by the 20-over
break. This continued after break as well, and
at 97/1 off 24 overs, it looked all over bar
the shouting.

This wasnt The Great Cliched Weekend for
nothing, however! Kiran was excellently
caught at midoff (off a skimming, low, flat
hit), and wickets began falling at alarmingly
quick intervals. Sudipto winkled out two
wickets with his deceptive offspin, a runout
complicated matters further, and Arka claimed
a caught behind to make things very interesting.
When Madhu's attempted big-hit over midwicket
went a mile into the air instead, and
was calmly held by the bowler Arka when it
came down, Peoria was suddenly still 35
away with only 4 wickets in hand. Padmaraju
in his next over claimed Raja and Santosh
while bowling a double-wicket maiden that
changed the game completely. And Peoria's
last hope Vivek Bhaskar was amazingly,
brilliantly caught the first ball of the
next over - a straight hit over the bowler's
head was somehow run down by the wide-longon
fielder Amit Patil, who covered at least 25
yards to hold a fantastic catch on the dead
run. Two balls later a close leg-before appeal
was turned down (the ball struck the pad
marginally outside the line of offstump, and
he was playing a shot :-), but the batsman
tried to steal a leg-bye and was runout
instead... and IIT had pulled off a remarkable
victory, as Peoria had contrived to somehow
lose 9 for 29 in 9 overs, and be bowled out
with 6 overs still to play!

Those were the three remarkable games of cricket
I was involved with this weekend. Three games,
all of which were dominated by one of the teams
most of the day, and yet it was the other team
which eventually won. Games where one team
appeared to have the game easily in hand, had the
game won at a canter really, about an hour
before they somehow ended up losing! The Wildcats
claimed 7/28 to win by 5 runs, while defending
124! IIT started the day at 57/7 - they should,
by rights, have made about 80 allout and been
heading home an hour later... instead they
managed to put up 158, saw the opposition
reply with 97/1, and *then* claimed 9/29
to almost comfortably defend 158 by a margin
of 32 runs!

I suppose cliches are cliches for a reason -
they may be old and hoary, but they are
usually true. (Oh, and the amazing Satha
played his first league game of the season...
and, of course, made a century in about 50
balls. In our league, I dont suppose there
is anything more cliched than that - they
ought to only put it in the "headlines" if
he actually fails to make a century on
some weekend in the future).

Written By: Sadiq Yusuf