Cricket...Cricket and more Cricket....

Come Summer time here in Akron for the cricketing enthusiasts its showtime....as there is lot of cricket played in the area. This summer we even have a lot of cricket played by the Indian cricket team....so thats more cricket...though its just watching but most of the people that follow cricket will spend their time watching the games live and reading articles online and also following the stats. For those on the Akron Cricket team (ACC) its some more cricket as they play games every weekend and follow the games in the other groups online. They spend most of the evenings in a week playing cricket and some part of the day visiting Midwest Cricket Website. They follow the scores and stats of their team mates and also of other players around the league. The members of ACC have introduced a points system to award or deduct certain points based on their performance in each of the games....so the see the points table atleast once a week :):)

Last weekend we won a game against West Viginia University and we were all pumped up and were high in confidence during the week and also during the tennis ball cricket games....but yesterday we had a terrible loss to Ohio State Univeristy.....they just outplayed us:(

We scored 159/9 in 35 overs largely thanks to KiranN and brijesh at the start, KiranN and KiranB in the middle overs and Srikanta and Sunny in the final 3 overs.....we could have scored much lesser if not for those guys.....we could have also scored more if a couple of other batsman had contributed....I have been keeping for the first 12 overs and then Kiran N for the rest of the match.....when we were fielding we were horrible.......we dropped 2 relatively easy catches in the third over!!!!!!! that was ridiculous as were playing the top seeds and the only undefeated team in the league with the best batsman in the league.....on top of that we were defending only 160!!!!! Couple more chances were grassed and we could not make a comeback with such blunders....their batsmen pounded us with thumping hits and their best batsman clobbered us around the park.....one six that he hit off my bowling was mind boggling!!!!!!!! I have not seen anyone smash a ball with such power and authority....its a struck absolutely flat and hard....even if it had gone straigh to the fielder he would have thought twice to put his hand to it.....then we pulled back a little by getting two quick wickets but that momentum was lost due to lack of application of the fielders and by the 3 dropped catches in the last couple of overs.....that was a disheartening loss....but we need to buckle up and play the next match as if it is a do-or-die situation as we need to win the last two matches to make it to the playoff's and being such a talented team it would be a pity not to make it atleast to the playoff's!!!!!!!

It was Hemant's birthday yesterday, he threw a big party saturday night instead so he could get drunk and not think of going to work the next day!!!!! we had a great time as most of the people that I knew came to the party and we enjoyed the barbeque and drinks thoroughly.....though for a veggie and non-alchoholic like me there were limited options we still had tons of fun....after 2 AM most of the normal people left and only a few were left in the party and it got wild!!!! Rushi, Brijesh and Hemant were drunk and starting jumping off the porch onto Hemant's "piece-of-junk" car !!!!!!! it was funny to watch some people restaining Hemya from jumping and he trying to device new ways to escape them and getting onto the porch to jump onto his car:)

India-Pak game is everyone's favorite around here (including my Advisor's:))....but we had to play a game so couldnt stay up to watch the match but we made 100's of calls during the day to follow the score!!!!! but we were disappointed at the end to find that India lost but were delighted that we could atleast get that bonus point to give some hope of making it to the finals:)

Hope the coming week brings goodluckand cheers to both the Indian Team and AkronCC :):):)

This is the tool kit used to perform that operation!!!!! Interesting isnt it??? 

Guess what this is???? Its a Baboon spine that we disected in the lab:) 

Cricket.....

Have been playing a lot of tennis ball cricket of late...surprising since we are playing in a tournament that uses Leather ball:):). But we dont have an option as we need to practice and dont have a place to play with the season ball...grrrrrr

Till last year we used to play on the filed that had batting cages right next to it so that we could have fielding practice and batting & bowling practice alson side each other. It was a perfect palce to practice as most of the pitches in our league use a concrete base with either carpet or astro-turf top. The batting cages were as if they were built for us, they had a concrete base with a carpet on it and had nets surrounding the batting and the bowling area. This year our practice field has been taken away from us as the University is constructing a "Frisbee Field" with Astro turf on it. Its a ridiculous decision as thousands of dollars are being spent on it and very very few people actually play frisbee on campus!!!!!!! I think its just another way of getting a practice field for the U A football team so that they dont have to travel 4 miles to the Rubber Bowl (abt a $40 million stadium)....they do anything and everything for the football program....thats unfair to the other students and athletes.

So now we play cricket on a softball field with tennis (MRI) ball and we play the league matches without any leather ball practice...I am not complaining abt that becoz we can see a lot more people participate and the games have become more competitive and its been fun taunting other players and we actually see what we do to the other teams:):) the only thing that would have made this scenario excellent is a facility to practice with leather ball atleast once a week:)

Last game was a bit disappointing as we didnt perform to our abilities in the bowling department and also in the batting dept to an extent. The top order collapse, brijesh and kiran out for ducks, was halted by Hari and Thimmanna...though the scoring wasnt that great they made sure that there was no more fall of quick wickets...Hari was looked to be getting back to his normal self and played calm and composed innings with occasional aggression to get a boundary. Unfortunately for Raghav after he played himself "in" he got out. Kiran B then went in as a bundle of nerves...the extent to which he got tensed was unbelievable. But he put together a courageous and aggressive knock with a couple of lives . Just as he was looking good he managed to give a simple catch that could not have been spilled even if he was fielding there :):) (just kidding buddy). I walked in next after a long break from cricket (due to the India trip). Hari was looking good when he played a stupid shot which can be considered to be a very very irresponsible shot given the context of the game and that he was the set batsman. he got out and Srikanta walked in confidently....he played the first couple of balls very well but then got carried away and tried to flick a ball and got a top edge that ended as a simple catch.

I have always enjoyed running with Baji as we have been in similar situations over the past year and we managed to run 1's and 2's comfortably. We were doing the exact same thing when he played an uppish flick that went straight to the fielder...came in sunny....at that point I think COBCA (other team) must have thought that they were on top with all the bastman gone....I got run out the next over...I usually run pretty fast but guys mentioned it to me later that i had slowed down during my second run that resulted in my run-out. But I felt that i was running in top gear....I was tired but I guess thats what happens when u have a long break and zero fitness:)...but my run out was the turning point of the innings as Manpreet and Sunny blazed away and scored 45 runs in less than 5 overs!!!!!!! we ended up with 182/8 in 35 overs not bad!!

They started off well and were on course to win if rain had not interfered!!!!!! Thank God for that...they were 104/1 in 18.3 overs....it was one of the few below par performances of our bowling attack...but atleast now we know that we cannot get over confident that we got others all-out in the stipulated overs!!!!!!!! now back to square one to figure out (fresh start)what has to be done abt the batting and bowling for the next match by putting the last match behind us...Go Akron Go....

Talking abt cricket and not mentioning Dravid is a sin!!!!!!! I know lot of people would beg to differ but I dont care:):) Did I ever??? Dravid showed the class today!!!!! though it was against UAE...the other batsmen had the same attack to face too....but he showed the kind of form he was in....AWESOME.....it was a treat to watch him and kind of improvisations he was pulling off were simply unbelievable...name it...Pull, Cut, Sweep, Gliding to the thirdman, flick, cover drive (can anybody hit it better???), inside out shot, lofted shots over the point area, down the ground and ofcourse his brilliant running between the wickets....he has come a long way from where he started and its time he gets what he deserves.....to be known as the "Premier batsman" of the current indian side....Just becoz u are someone's fan u cannot deny the facts as they are proven by stats!!!!!!!

This is a picture of me after my graduation last year!!!! little did I know that I would start school again:)....trying this new hello software for posting pictures on the blog:) 

continued....

More abt the trip....for the first time I travelled long distances by bus in India...i had previously never travelled for more than 3-4 hrs....in the past 12 yrs atleast...but I travelled from Jalgaon to Pune and Pune to Mumbai by Bus, Bangalore to Hyd and HYD to mumbai also by Bus....the best rides were Pune to Mumbai and Hyd to Mumbai....they were Volvo buses that were extremely comfortable. The seats were better than the plane seats (economy class)....they go back twice as much as the seats in plane and had the overhead AC and light controls....it was a nice journey...but very very expensive...more than Train travel but the timings are convenient as most of the bus journeys are over night so u dont feel that u lost a day or so....u travel most of the distance in ur sleep....there were two instances that were note worthy....first was the sleeper bus from Jalgaon to Pune...Adi insisted on me taking the sleeper bus and now I hate Adi for that as I got the top birth (like in a 2nd class coach in the train)....but it was cramped...I couldnt fit there...with great diffculty I squeezed onto the berth then i realized that the light was on the other side (I wanted to read)....I tried turning but couldnt so I had to get down and climb back with feet first (it was very very embarassing)....people were watching with curiosity to know what I was upto:):)......the next instance was on my bus journey from Bangalore to Hyderabad....I was excited that they played Yuva...I was plannning on watching it so I was glad....watched the movie for abt 1 hr and 20 mins before were stopped for dinner, After dinner when the movie and the journey resumed people in the bus wanted to sleep so they made the driver turn off the volume!!!!!!!!!!! so i watched the rest of the movie without sound!!!!!!!!! I was furious as it was 10PM and people were ready to sleep...nothing against them but why to turn the volume off?????

One more incident that I will remember for sometime is my visit to Tirupati....I have walked up the 7 hills before but never with my Mom and sis so it was a different experience...I should give a lot of credit to my Mom for being able to climb the hills at the same pace as my sister (not exactly but considering her age it was good pace)....we stopped for rest every 10-15 mins and drank drinks and ate in the stalls...it was like a fun hike:):) when we went to the temple the next day I couldnt recognize it as it was surrounded completely by buidlings!!!!!!! it didnt loook like the temple that I had been to n number of times....all the stalls were moved to a different locations and there was construction going on every where (just like at the U of Akron)...the whole place lost its charm...thats the best to put it according to me....it loooked more like a commercial place than a religious place....lots of hotels, cottages, guest houses and restaurants...I thought I knew Tirumala (Tirupati is the city at the foot hill and Tirumala is on top of the hill) very welll but this time I couldnt find my way around as they have laid many roads and constructed many buidlings....all things apart...the Darshanam was great....its a complete different feeling when u see the idol of lord Venkateswara....its a divine feeling which is hard to express in words....all the frustrations that u have when in line are completely gone once u see the idol

Lot of other places that I had visited have also changed....the once village where my grand parents stay is now a town with lots of industries and also an engineering college!!!!!!!! it was completely different....it was nice and calm some years ago but now its busy with lots of vehicles and other businesses...I was delighted to see my Grand parents ..... I had stayed with them for 2 yrs when I was little (from age 1 to age 3)....my mom thought I was too difficult to handle with my (then)infant sister...so she sent me to my grand parents house...thats the reason why I call my mom "mummy" and my grand mom "amma" (telugu word for mother)....I used to see all my uncles and aunts call her "amma" so i started calling her that too and I still refer to her as "amma". They have a huge house, I used to feel lost and frightened sometimes when i was little...but now it was a different experience to goto the same house....they used to keep the stuff in the top shelves so that I couldnt get to but now I am taller than all of them so I could reach for things that they couldnt get to without a stool/chair.....its a funny feeling...driving in that place is more difficult than driving in Mumbai (its different may be it cannot be compared)....as it involved cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, scooters, bikes, rickshaws, autos, people, kids, cows, pigs etc....alll on the road and most in the middle of the road...it was quite a challenge.

The other change that I have see in India is the spending capacity of the people. It has gone up tremendously...people have been going out more often and eat out more and there have been a lot of malls that came up recently so people have been shopping more too...The movies have become expensive.....Imax in mumbai is most common hangout for the weekends...if u take a family there u will easily spend abt Rs.1000 just to watch a movie and eat a snack there...I went bowling for the first time in india and I was shocked to see that it was Rs.200 a frame and it was jam packed at 11 in the night!!!!! it had abt 20 lanes and there was come wait time too:):) ...... welll all in all even I ended up spending a lot of money on travel, eating out, buying clothes and gifts and also on telephones (had to call Sindhu in Hyd regularly:):) )...end of a memorable trip :(:(

Back in the US of A...

Got back from India last week....it was a great trip had loads of fun and ate tons of sweets. But the sad part is that the trip that I had been waiting for the past 2 and 1/2 yrs is over and now I have start waiting for my next trip:( that's sad....5 weeks just flew by and I didn't even realize that I had gone to India for a visit...except for the first day...I felt completely at home and didn't miss Akron (and of course my cooking) at all:). Met with all my friends and we picked up from where we left the last time and we didn't feel that we hadn't met in a while...I guess that's what happens when you somebody for too long. I met my groups of friends when I first moved to Bombay in 1993. We have been friends since then have had great time together....we had our shares of joy and sadness. We used to celebrate the B'days and also when we did well in the exams but there were gloomy days when some friend had to leave for good or when someone got a KT.

Its an inexplicable feeling when I saw my parents and my sister, initially it was just joy but in the next couple of days it was love and affection and everything else that I can think of. Now I miss my Mom waking me up early in the morning at 10 AM :) I have to get up for my alarm with great difficulty and have to make my own coffee. I miss the filter coffee that my Mom makes....its taste is completely different. Earlier (during my undergrad) I had to wait for my dad to finish the paper on Sunday before I could get it but now it was better as we had two papers on Sunday...one telugu paper and the other being Times of India...my dad reads the telugu paper so I could comfortably sip my coffee and read TOI. I miss going on walks with my Sis...this time around we hardly got time together but we made the most out of it....now that she is also an earning member (I am still a student)she keeps teasing me abt that and when we went shopping we used to have fights in the shop as to who will pay....it was quite a sight for the shop keepers:) as we were wielding our cards out as fast as we could and trying to get to the cash counter faster than the other person.

I went down south to meet my relatives and it was quite a hectic trip...I was gone for 17 days and I visited abt 9 places....first went to Vizag then to Vizianagaram (dad's place)...then to Rajam (mom's place) back to Vizag....then to Tirupati via- Madras...then drove to Bangalore and finally to hyderabad. Had also gone to see Adi in Jalgaon and Bhai in Pune....so it was quite an eventful trip.

.....to be continued :)