End of Cricket Season

The much-hyped cricket season has ended abruptly this year without any conclusion on the overall series. Apart from typical British weather- which didn’t allow us to play few matches, there are several other reasons to blame for…. TCS couldn’t form playing 11 and blogger Ranganath himself is one of the reason as he failed to motivate his captain and rest of the team after that controversial “batting order saaga” in the last match.... :)

The entire season was a roller-coast ride for vigils. They played few nail-biting matches against TCS, lost few and managed to pull-in few in their favor. The match against Wipro should be the top in their favorite list as it was the most entertainment match till date and everyone got their money’s worth.

Though the series kind of ended abruptly; it was a good talent hunting for vigils and they have managed to find few young talents like Kesavan, Amit and Prasad. Hopefully, they will take active and bigger roles in the years to come… and this will help the team management to make few “Dravid” like figures to redundant from next season.

Good luck to all and see you all next year;

Do keep checking this site; I will be using this space to write about my favorite cricketer... “The wall of Indian cricket, the honorary brand ambassador of Karnataka tourism and the selfless cricketer in the history of cricket” –Yes, It is about “Rahul Dravid. He is not doing so well now… but this will not change my view.

Do come back later!!

Ranganath Kempanahally

Match Preview : Vigils looking for 3 in a row!!

After the successful victory to level the series against TCS in their last match; Vigils are all set to have a big clash tomorrow. Vigils have had a good match practise in the nets all week and are looking forward to have a good match tomorrow.

TCS captain has been restless ever since that defeat and eagerly looking forward for the tomorrow’s match to take revange; According to sources, he is planning to bring 15 members monster team for tomorrow’s game.

It’s been a hot & dry weather throughout the week so far.. and hopefully it will remain same tomorrow.

Match Facts:
Saturday 26th July 2008
Series Position : 2-2
Starting time: 9:30AM

Vigils Team:

Ravi, Prasad, Rajesh, Dnyan, Gaurav, Nivrutti, Pradeep, Kesavan(WK), Amit, Ashish(Captain), Karthik and Ranganath(Xtra Player)

News:

In an experimental trial, we are planning to take 3 angle video shooting of tomorrow’s complete match; The match highlights, slow-motion mixing, 3-angle view of important events with song-dubbing of some heroic stunts will be recorded and burn into DVDs. These DVDs will be available for sale on pre-order basis and you can contact our technical team on Maidenhead.vigils@gmail.com for pricing and other details if you want to own one… :)

K7’s heroic on local paper!!

Vigils wicket keeper batsmen Kesavan (K7) has been talk of the town now; He played for Boyn hill cricket club last Sunday and his heroic knock of 31 runs is published on a Maidenhead local news paper (Maidenhead Advertiser) this week.

Kudos to Keasavan!
Vigils team and the management are very happy with his achievement. He has now set himself a very high expectation and to meet.

Hope we get to see many more such heroics from him in the future

Will see you all tomorrow!!!!

Ranganath K-hally

Vigils crush TCS by 122 runs

Vigils bowled out TCS for 81 runs after posting a formidable 202 runs in the limited 20 overs. Good Batting and some ectastic fielding & bowling performances from the vigilians got them the much needed victory against TCS.

After having lost 2 successive games against TCS and being 1-2 behind in the series; the onus was definitely on Vigils to win and level the series. Though they had a good game against Wipro in their last match, winning against TCS is what they were looking forward over few weeks.

Beginning...

After some heavy downpours on Thursday and Friday, the match was in danger of being called off. But few sunny spells in the morning and lot of eagerness to play cricket finally saw off that threat. It was a gloomy day with little sunshine here and there. Both captains decided to have a 20 over clash and start the match on-time on this partly cloud covered pitch. Finally, the coin was tossed at 10:00 O clock and Vigils luck with the coin deserted six times in succession and they were asked to bat first on the wicket which had hardly any bounce.

Vigils Innings:

With 1-2 down in the series; vigils wanted a good start from their trusted openers Kesavan and Gaurav. Little Overconfident, Kesavan went for a wrong shot at the very second ball he faced and got out cheaply by edging to the fielder. Amit – the “orange cap” player of the season so far couldn’t stay longer as well. He appeared in the middle like he was emotional and couldn’t control his emotions of not being with his buddy Kesavan at the crease and decided to join him at the pavilion by throwing his wicket in the very next ball. TCS Captain was delighted with his bowler’s effort and wanted to wind up the match early to have third in row.

After Amit’s exit; Dnyan joined Gaurav for the 3rd wicket in the middle. He had huge responsibility on his shoulder to set things right and vigils wanted a good partnership from these two.

The Lion Roar, Finally…

Dnyan - who have been the second most destructive batsmen on this ground (Obviously the firs-one has to be Ranganath) was going through bad patch. He hardly scored any runs this season, had various problems on his fitness and wasn’t connecting the ball correctly on his previous last 10 encounters. Infact, some of the oppositions have thrown few passing comments on his recent performance.

Looks like he has worked hard in the nets and was well prepared this time. The body language was suggesting his fitness and was looking very confidant in the middle. He played a superb knock of 46 and was part of the much needed century parteship for the 3rd wicket with Gaurav.

Captain’s Innings..

Captain ashish, who generally deals with only sixes most of the time had right platform to accelerate the scoring rate. He battered every TCS bowlers along with the help of Rajesh and Ravi to post an unreachable total of 202 runs in the allotted 20 overs.

Rain of Sixes..

Overall there were about 7 sixes in the Vigils innings and it was a good hand stretching exercise for the umpires.

Two early wickets and the low-toss ball which deceived Nivrutti in the 17th over are probably the one few relishing moments for TCS in the 1st Innings.

Innings Break:

Chasing 203 runs was not an easy task and vigils camp wanted to restrict TCS within 150…as the runs scored with bat was 150 runs in the 1st innings. (Yes, TCS have conceived almost 50 extras in their innings!!!!)

TCS Innings:

TCS almost had an impossible target to achieve and were in need of almost 10+ runs per over to pull this game in their favor. They were in need of a brisk start from their openers and captain Raibatoak put himself up in the order to have a good “GO” in the up-front. Ravi opened bowling for vigils from the south-end and was hitting the pitch hard on this low pitch. He got an early reward when Pradeep took the stunner at point. Kesavan was brilliant behind the stumps and was part of a brilliant run out single handed.

For a change, Vigils - who generally lazy on the field were very quick and have grabbed every opportunity thrown at them. Ravi took a Collingwood style catch in single hand. TCS folks had to pay penalty for every of their mistakes and were running to pavilion like ANTS-following just one after another.

Dnyan who has inspired from srilankan new bowler-Ajantha Mandis was bowling in his Carom-ball style and he was very impressive. He along with Rajesh didn’t allow any of the tail-enders to even take a guard at the crease. A stunning caught & bowl by Rajesh was worth mentioning.

Match Summary:

The day was belongs to Vigils; they were superb in every department of the game and it was convincing win for them to get back into the series.

Man of the Match: Dnyan for his All-round performance.

(Victorious Vigils)

Will see you all in the next match!!

Nivrutti Andhale/Ranganath K-Hally

Confident Vigils look to level the series

Vigils previous game against Wipro may not have finished on the field but they still managed to win convincingly! (The result was rather settled unconventionally on the web by polling, 5 people thought that Vigils would have gone on to win whereas none voted for Wipro!). Vigils are feeling confident that they can square-up the series against TCS on Saturday. Especially the show they put in their batting. Having lost only two wickets in their previous games Vigils batmen are bubbling with confidence. But not everything is going their way, their main bowler, Ranganath is out of action due to back injury (the news is that he is working on his form and fitness after being spanked by the caption last time for below-par show). Since Vibhu is not available to play, captain has lot of thinking to do about bowling attack. Dnyan’s all-round abilities will definitely come to test in this match. He and Amit have been busy practising in nets and looking forward to blast the TCS bowling attack. Batting order will be strengthened further by Predeep’s comeback in the side. Two new faces (Ravi’s friend and K7’s (K007 actually) friends) will get their first cap of the season for vigils. So it will be a challenging game for Vigils but they will be feeling confident about winning it. If the weather stays clear, the game will start at 10BST.


Probables:

Ashish(captain & wk), Dnyan, Nivrutti, Gaurav, Rajesh, Ravi, Amit, Kesavan, Pradeep, Ravi’s friend, Kesavan’s friend

Will see you all in the ground tomorrow at 9:30.

Nivrutti Andhale

Update: Controversial match ended in Vigils favor!

Last week’s undecided controversial match has been decided and awarded in favor of vigils.

According to poll results conducted between 2nd of July 2008 to 9th July 2008, 83% of the readers/analysts have voted in favor of vigils, none of them have voted for Wipro and 16% of them have chosen to be “neutral”.

83% is a “First class with distinction” score; hence Vigils are declared as Winners of this match. (Please check the poll bar status on the right hand side of this blog. )

Ashish Develekar and Ketan patel will co-share the “Player of the match” award for providing/giving such a dramatic finish to the game... :)

?????? Won the Controversial High-Scoring Drama

It is possibly the most bizarre ending for a game of cricket at any level; we probably have witnessed and been a part of many such endings in street("gali cricket") cricket days during our childhood. Generally in gali cricket, the lad who owns cricket-set decides the virtue of the game, it is his will and wish to play/stop the game at any point based on how he want to see the game progress, what he feels is the right decision and feels he has every right to walk out of the ground with his kit... :)

In every adult there is a child who may sometimes get naughty and lead us on to do a few childish things in life…. perhaps thats what happened with most of us on the day and the child in us took us back to our gali cricket days. Anybody who saw the events on Saturday afternoon during that controversial match-breaking run-out in the 24th over of the second innings will tell how childish and adamant we all can be. Here we are a bunch of 30+ mature(??) educated and professional blokes fighting like cats on the ground.

There was no D/L(Duckworth-Lewis) method or any Match referee to decide the winner; Hence I kindly request the readers to vote your match result on the right hand side of this blog after reading the match report below.

Beginning…

Constant prayers to the “Rain God” throughout the week seems to have finally paid off. God was kind enough not to spit and mess up this much awaited clash between the old rivals. May be he knew what was in store and wanted to watch the fun as well... :)

Players from both the sides arrived on the field ahead of the start time and got some chance to practice before the match. Finally the coin was tossed at 10:45 and Wipro’s Captain Ketan Patel won the toss and decided to bat first to take maximum advantage on this fast and clear outfield.

Wipro’s Innings:

Sudeep and Sashi started the innings for Wipro, they went after the vigils bowling attack right from the very first over and were right on the money. Sashi became bit greedy and ran himself out while he tried to convert 2 runs into 3 in the very second over, it was probably too early in the innings to take such a risk & to sprint so fast. He just couldn’t ground the bat in-time and got run-out cheaply. After Sashi’s exit, Ajith (who was subjected to “Loyalty discussion” for playing against vigils) joined Sudeep in between. Both played brilliantly, were looking very stubborn and had answer to all kind of variations that vigils could come up with. They went on to make 72 runs for the 2nd wicket partnership before Ajith got bowled in 12th over.

(Ajith and Sudeep)

It was sudeep who carried the momentum and played with almost every player till the 26th over. He got out when the team score was 143 with an individual score of 47. Captain Ketan Patel did a perfect slogging at the end to post a very competitive score of 197 runs in the allotted 30 overs.

Though, there were few exchange of words with the umpires regarding the wide and noball decisions; many felt the 1st innings was rather smooth, something was missing and was very unusual for these two teams to be like that. Hmmmm... It really can’t be so smooth when these two teams playing against each other and they have almost 5 years of legacy behind for not being so disciplined on the ground.

Innings break:

Both teams were pleased with their performance and were happily chit-chatting the +ves and –ves of the innings on their dug-outs…

(Vigils during Innings break)

• Many of the vigils players felt Ranganath’s bowling performance was average and his fielding was horrendous; Captain Ashish and Vice-captain Nivrutti expressed their views to the team more in a warning tone saying “He(Ranganath) is no more a X-factor for us and we have him in the team just because he blogs & writes good about us…. Most of the time, Karthik who comes free with him as buy one get one free does better job.

While the team was discussing about Ranganath's sacking plan if he does not show improvement in his game, the poor-chap was busy in taking pictures of Wipro team’s heroes for his next blog!

• Kesavan, who kept wickets instead of Ashish this time also came under the scanner. Many felt he did fairly good job behind the wickets but took sometime to get adjusted to the conditions. This had costed quite a few extras to the team in the form of byes and last few wickets as well. Also some of the current and part-time keeping experts felt he is trying too many new things behind the stumps. It is good to see him active but it is too early for him to try so many acrobatic stuffs and he should aim to collect the ball properly first…:)

Vigils Innings:

Vigils were in need of almost 6.5 runs per over to win the match and they wanted a good start from their openers. Kesavan & Gaurav started the chase a bit slow initially but managed to pick up the momentum later and soon started milking runs as per the required rate. Gaurav hit the first six of the season on long-on over the umpire’s head, he was bit rushing and was in a great hurry to finish the match to go home early. He tried to hit hard in the very next ball and threw away his wicket. Amit, the highest run scorer for vigils this season till date joined his buddy Kesavan in the middle. Kesavan and Amit played a much needed constructive innings and scored 92 runs for the 2nd wicket partnership before Kesavan got out. Vigils were 112 at this stage and in need of another 84 runs to win from 12 overs with eight wickets in hand.

(Amit and Kesavan batting in the middle)

After Kesavan’s exit, Dnyan joined Amit at the crease for the 3rd wicket. Though he started off well and hit four runs in the very first ball he faced, he didn’t survive for long and got out cheaply by giving an easy catch at the mid-off to Sashi. Well, there was an interesting comment from Jagan to his bowling mate Murali – “Myth is that Dnyan can hit and is a destructive batsman, but he hasn’t been able to hit anything in the last 10 matches and is been getting out cheaply for less than 10 runs”. May be Jagan was trying to boast his bowling confidence. After Dnyan’s dismissal, Vibhu – the secret weapon of vigils joined well in-form Amit in the middle. Both start middling the balls well and were constantly on the hunt for the required run-rate.

Umpiring and Decisions:

We have been trying hard to arrange for neutral umpires since the beginning of our season to avoid any conflicts between the teams. It is very difficult to get one over the weekends as most of them are already engaged this summer and contracted with Sus-sex, Es-sex and Middle-sex county games...:) Hence the players from both the sides during the match will generally end up umpiring taking turns. As we have seen in International cricket, benefit of any doubt either it is LBW or any run/stump out will always be given to the batsman and so is the case in our matches as well…. since the umpires are from batting side, fielding side always feel that umpires are cheating and giving decisions against them and sometimes they even tend to use “f” and “s” adjectives on umpires.

Ketan finally introduced his secret bowling weapon Mr Raju from the pavilion end and he was very economical in his bowling. The asking rate started piling up for vigils and they were in need of almost 7+ runs per over in the remaining last 8 overs. They were confident as they still had 8 wickets in hand and likes of Rajesh, Ravi, Ashish and Nivrutti were yet to come. The pendulum really started swinging in both directions and both the teams were quite intense and fully charged up to pull the games in their favour!!!

First bubble burst!!!

At this stage, Amit pushed a ball towards Ketan who was fielding at point and asked Vibhu for a quick single. Ketan threw the ball to the keeper and the on-side fielder Kiran came in between the leg-umpire’s vision to cover the wicket to save any possible over throws. Leg umpire has to really lean towards his right to make correct decision. Vibhu was well within the ground and not-out was called; much awaited first bubble got burst at this stage and Ketan went really after the umpires about the decision. Leg-umpire had to explain everything he has seen to calm him down.

(Leg-umpire Ranganath convincing Ketan in between)

Controversial Match–Breaking run out!!

Match went on for another two overs and Ketan was constantly commenting on the umpires. It was 26th over of the innings, Raju bowled his second ball of the over from the pavilion end. Vibhu hit a ball in between long-off and mid-off. He took an easy first run and called for a second run. Amit, who generally can't run faster couldn’t ground the bat in time and the bowler/fielder Raju flipped the wickets in (hands/ball???) and the ball rolled out from the fielder.

Main umpire Ashish was of the opinion that the fielder didn’t collect the ball correctly as the ball rolled out and he hit the wickets with his hands. This lead to a huge controversary and everyone started arguing and opining their views and showing their frustration on each others. In the next few minutes, Ketan removed the stumps and pulled his team out of the ground. Few players tried their best to convince both the captains and wanted the game to finish!!!!

There are few photos and video of the same; Please have a look into it and enjoy!!!

Will see you all in the next match!!! hopefully without any controversary. Please do vote in who you feel would have proceeded to win this DRAMATIC match!!:)


Ranganath K-hally

5th Match Preview: Clash between Old Rivals

After last week’s rain abandoned match; players from both sides (Vigils and Wipro) are more eager and are looking forward to play their much awaited season’s first clash between them this weekend. Again, the weather forecast for this Saturday looks a bit dodgy and there may be some light showers expected on and off. Vigils are hoping and praying the “Rain God” not to piss and mess their game plan again…. They may be humming a modified version of the popular nursery rhyme, and praying more in a frustrated tone!!! :)

Rain, Rain Go away
Come again another day.

Rain, Rain go away
Don’t come on Saturday.
We(-gils) want a cricket play.
In the braywick cricket hay.

Rain, Rain go to hell.
Never show your face again.. :).





Check Gary’s new weather forecasting stone for accurate weather forecast!!







Match facts:
Saturday, June 28th 2008.Start time 09:30 (BST)Series Position: 0:0

Watch out for…

• Vigils Veghduths, famously known as tri-R’s (Rajesh, Ravi and Ranganath) are back in action together for the first time in the series. Statistics show that Vigils have not lost any game where these trios have bowled together.


• Rajesh, who bowled well and did some sensible batting in the last game by adding almost 42 runs for the 9th wicket partnership with Kesavan is looking forward to continue his form in the upcoming match as well.


• Vigils main batsmen(Amit and Dnyan) are completely fit now and looking forward to making their first big partnership of this season against Wipro.


• Vibhu, the team’s official energy supplier is bringing loads of energy drinks and snacks this time. Hope players do get a chance to play cricket inbetween "eating and drinking” plan..:)

Vigils (Probables) :

Ashish(Capt & WK), Ranganath, Rajesh, Ravi, Nivrutti, Dnyan, Vibhu, Amit, Ajay, Kesavan, Gaurav and Karthik.

Few stray thoughts and Changes..…..

Dnyan, whom Vigils consider as their main batsman; seems to be keen to play with Wipro(against Vigils) this time. He feels it will be a tactical move and seems to be thinking way ahead.

• Vigils bowling attack has been good and would like to face their bowling once to check his batting strength.
• This will allow him to play better cricket in the future games against opponents like TCS who have an equally good bowling attack.
• The game against Wipro would serve as a practice game for our future matches.
  

It sounds more of a “Duralochan” than “Duu..uu..r-alochan”!!!! :)

Ajith, who has been a core player and centrally contracted, will be playing for Wipro in the upcoming match!!!. Yes, it sounds bit of Gaddarish type :)and this move pushes one to think of the"loyalty" to vigils. Many people felt he should be thrown out of the team & a few others thought may be he should be thrown out of the planet with escape velocity -:)…. But since he had already taken permission from Vigil’s captain before the begining of the series; he was allowed to play and can fulfill the promise he made to his X-Team/Captain by playing one game for them.
(Note: he was X-Wipro Player and played for Wipro last few seasons and is allowed to play only one game for them.)

Let’s pray and hope we will get to sweat instead of getting wet this Saturday. See you all in Braywick sharp @ 9:30 AM.

Ranganath K-hally