Irvine Willows

For the past few weeks, reminiscing our memorable games, we unwittingly found ourselves driving to the Alton Athletic Park (even though it was closed the previous week) only to return to Oak Creek Elementary and find ourselves relegated to a corner, forced to play on the off. There are definitely some upshots of this self-calibration, as now we increasingly find ourselves trying to turn the bat to slice or angle the ball to the point or watch the ball and then try to play the shot on the off. That's quite nice! The weather was awesome, slightly nippy but very bright. Special mention to Rajesh for being the first one at the AAP and then at Oak Creek too. After 15 minutes of wait he slowly started seeing folks arrive. If not for him we would be at home kicking ourselves for not getting up early. Team A: Abhijeet, Bala, Vamshi, Amit and Rajesh Team B: Chandru, Senthil, Rishi (new guy), Siddharth and Anand Team B won the toss and elected to bat. I think Rishi opened the

The day began on a slightly sour note, but Chandru’s email turned it around for the better. Seeing his email I decided to put on my shoes and knew where I wanted to be in the next 15 minutes. When I got to the field I saw Bala locking his bike. I was thinking, he too must have read the email. Chaitanya also did an about turn and was already on the field along with Rajesh, Partha, Pankaj, Chandru and Gaur, the new guy. We decided to go with Chandru’s gut and play a match with 4 per team. We had to share the ground with the soccer team, which in fact added to the fun quotient. Given the number of players and with an eye to prepare and train ourselves we decided to keep leg-side off limits and play only on the off. Chandru went a step ahead and even cordoned off the area by placing cones straight down the field till the boundary line. Honestly I didn’t think I would enjoy the game as much but after 2 hours I was left wanting for more. Team A: Bala, Pankaj, Rajesh and Chandru