September 22, 2007: An open letter...

This letter is addressed to all the people who I have had the pleasure of knowing during my four years at Austin, and who I have had to honor of playing with as part of the Longhorn Cricket Club. It elaborates on my cricket experiences after becoming a UT Alum.

Today, I played my first match outside the Longhorn Cricket Club team, and I am confident I have done the team proud with my performance. It was certainly a difficult day to play cricket, with the late monsoon showers spraying the pitch every now and then. It seems that my reputation as a decent opening bowler has followed me to India, since when we lost the toss and were asked to bowl; I was given the ball to open our campaign. The rain led to the match being a quick affair, with each team having only eight overs.

The rustiness showed immediately as I started off with a wide. It seemed like bowling over arm was not my cup of tea anymore. But I bounced back pretty quickly. The second ball was my trademark short ball to welcome the batsman to the crease. Our team proved to be outstanding and with a concentrated effort we restricted the opposition to a paltry eleven runs all out. My performance was a respectable 2-0-6-2, with three runs and a wickets coming in each over. The best part was that both my wicket taking balls cleaned up the batsman’s middle stump.

Clearly we were not the only team to have a good bowling attack. I got a chance to bat with only four runs on the board. Since we needed eight runs in 5.5 overs, I wasn’t too worried. I just needed to protect my wicket and runs would come. The runs came, with me hitting a six over the long off boundary on my fifth ball. I got flashbacks of batting against the Hawks in my last game as part of the Longhorn Cricket Club team, and of hitting a six on the last ball during my last taped tennis ball tournament. We got two more runs off wides and the game had been won. I was 6* off 11 balls with no fours and a six.

You might say this was a great match to have as a come-back to playing cricket. But I wasn’t pleased with my performance. I bowled a fair number of wides and was not able to swing the ball. I guess that is what happens when you play with a rubber ball. All in all, a great day of gully cricket!!