Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A lively weekend and its aftermath

Last weekend was an eventful one. On saturday, I booked my 1st car. After months of indecisiveness, I finally decided to go ahead and book a Hyundai i10. For now, it looks like the best car cnsidering my usage and other factors. Last few months I have been thinking about so many cars but just not able to take a decision. Now that I have decided, I am happy with it and looking forward to having it with me next week.

Sunday was a day packed with cricket. There were two great matches in the world cup(to watch) and a couple of great matches played as well. In the world cup, it was England/South Africa and India/Ireland games played in Chennai and Bengaluru respectively.

The encounter in Chennai made the world cup even more interesting since Englishmen managed to defend a paltry total of 171 runs against the tournament favourites South Africa. It was a great fightback especially after losing to Ireland. The encounter in Bengaluru was a rather expected result where the men in blue beat the Irish pretty easily. However, the win was not as easy as it should have been. Indians were pretty much cautious after the tie against Englishmen and Irish were upbeat after beating the Englishmen. But you don't expect Ireland to win everyday. Now, it looks as if the world cup is getting interesting especially the group involving India.

That was about the cricket world cup. On sunday there was a cricket tournament organized in my company. It was an intra-account tournament. The account that I belong to(CITI-CLRS) has atleast 120 people and 4 teams were made out of these 120 guys. SAS/WINS, Legal, SPIDER and Trade Surveilance. It was a knock-out tournament. It was 2 Semi-finals followed by the finals that took place at ITPL grounds. I played for the SAS/WINS team.

The 1st game was between us and Trade surveilance. Lokesh,our captain won the toss and chose to bat 1st. It was a 12 over game where we managed to score 89 runs. Personally I was satisfied to carry my bat through the innings as an opener. Though Im not sure how mch I scored, it was just such a satisfaction to play cricket after so many days. Though we were the underdogs in the game, we managed to defend the 89 runs we scored. The credit goes to the spinners in my team they just turned it around when it mattered.

The 2nd game was between Legal and SPIDER. SPIDER-men batted 1st and scored 89 runs. Their star was Ramesh and Manju. After the 1st match we pretty much knew it was a challenging score and SPIDER-men did a great job to defend it.

Now, we played the SPIDER-men in the final, where SPIDER-men managed 81 batting 1st. They scored atleast 60 out of their 81 runs in their 5 middle overs. One of them bowled by me. I was pretty satisfied the way I bowled to begin with, but was hammered in my 3rd over. Perhaps trying to hard cost me dear. Manju was their star again. In response we managed to stay in the game till last ball and lost the game by 1 run.

Though it was the fun that counted, losing the final still feels like a job half done. But to take positives out of the weekend, I feel we did a great job to keep the tempo in-spite of the heat and physical strain. Though most of us had played after years.

It is already Wednesday, Still the pains in my body remind me of the fun I had on sunday. It is so satisfying having stayed at the crease for 17 overs and bowled 6 overs almost at 100% effort. A win would have made the pain sweeter, but it is participation that counts. I truly hope, we have more such lively weekends where we play and remind ourselves that there is still some time for us to grow old.

Though the aftermath is painful, This pain is much better than the continuous stress one associates with  the software world.