Bad Fallingbostel Indoor Cricket Champions 2010 :)

Gloomy weather, hard to see the sun shine, drizzling drops of water on the leaves of alpine trees, definitely not an ideal condition to play cricket outside. But off late I realized Cricket can also be played indoor with some great enthusiasm. Recently had a chance to represent Bad Fallingbostel Indoor Cricket Championship 2010 for my club Lüneburg. Twelve teams represented in the tournament out of which eight of them from British Army. Really asked myself why British army still exists in German soil? Hmm…NATO, Second World war…Uhgghghg….Big yawn…lets get back to Cricket ;)

We just formed a team just before two months and started to practice for fun once in a week. We got really hammered in North German Indoor Tournament 2010 by Göttingen. We never played as a team and many discipline aspects of the game were lacking. So went to the tournament as mere representatives to have fun during the weekend. I never even thought I would play a Cricket game against English guys. It was so fun to be surrounded by English guys and hear the sugar coated words of f**k f**k when facing the ball.

Fortunately or unfortunately, we ended up with the same points with another top team in our group. So SUPER BOWLOUT was used to decide the winning team for Semi-Finals. Each team has six balls to bowl to hit the stumps. The team with maximum number of hits qualifies for the semi-finals. If nobody hits the stumps in six balls, then its sudden death i.e. the team which hits first qualifies. It was so fun to be this situation. Both the teams didn’t manage to hit the stumps in six balls. So sudden death. Thanks to my colleague Faisal from Pakistan who managed to hit the stumps and we qualified for the semi-finals. Couldn’t control our emotions, we ran through the surface and grabbed the wicket and threw them away…Got a warning from the organizer…but who cares when you enjoy some moments of life…;)

Then comes semi-finals against Hannover. Hannover had lots of supporters especially quite a lot of Indian Chicks. Seriously a tough team to handle on and off the field ;). We made some good friends during the day with some English guys. So they supported us as well for Semi-finals and finals which made a huge impact on our game. It was so funny with a character named Geoffrey and slogans like “Come on Geoffrey” “Come on Lüneburg” made the day even more everlasting. It was a close match against Hannover and we managed to reach the finals which we could never believe for a moment.

So finals against Göttingen. The funny memories of lambasting and harassment before one month by Göttingen were lingering in our minds. But I always heard from Sir Geoffrey Boycott “Cricket is a punny game, anything can happen” with Yorkshire accent in TV commentaries when I used to bunk my college days to watch Cricket ;) We won the toss and elected to bat first. We made a good start making 90 for no loss and finally ended up with 106 all out …heheheeeee

It was easy chase for Göttingen by taking in to considerations of the quality of players they have got. They lost wickets at regular intervals and finally it reached a situation. 6 balls 8 runs and one wicket remaining. Our great leg spinner Mr. Henner Jung, a German who has great passion for the game had to bowl the final over ;) It was indeed lollipop for Göttingen to finish the game in great style. Finally it came 2 balls 4 runs needed. There was misunderstanding between the batsmen and finally Göttingen lost the final wicket under pressure. Oh my god, who were the champions. Is it Lüneburg? This is something which we couldn’t believe ourselves. Really great moments! Definitely a weekend which would reside in my memory forever. Thanks to Faisal, Ali, Rizwan and Sri, with out them we wouldn’t have cherished this victory.

At the end of the day, “Cricket is a punny game” as referred by funny Yorkshire men 

Ich mag nicht Kricket, Ich liebe Es!
Sathish Kumar S