Article by Gaurav Tripathi
Last weekend when the seniors were using their experience in the Indo-Pak Senior’s match, at the same time the young Houston Indians Cricket Club (HICC) team with a few debutants was involved in a very interesting tussle with Corpus Christi Cricket Club (CCCC). The end result for both the games turned out to be a tie which is what you get in a match where the performance from both the sides is top class.

It was a cloudy Sunday morning with overcast conditions and CCCC won the toss and elected to bat. After a couple of over the HICC bowlers got into rhythm and started getting wickets at regular interval. Since it was a friendly match it was decided by the captains that 30 overs would be bowled by both the teams and the batsmen can bat again if they get out, so that everyone can get some match practice before the season starts.

The first wicket for CCCC fell in the 4th over when Tejas made an opener knick to Kishan in the slips. After that it was all HICC as batsmen from CCCC came and went with little cameo innings. The highlight of fielding was superb performance of Nikhil. Every thing that came to him in the air was caught brilliantly by him. He was the star of the ball game the previous night too. The second highlight of the game was the bowling of 10 year old debutant Karan Patel. He is just 10 year old but has a big heart and is in the making of a good cricketer. Karan got 3 wickets in 3 overs and he was the only HICC bowler who bowled 2 batsmen with his slow and teasing spinners.

HICC was chasing a 224 and they were off to a splendid start with their openers Arun and Monik making a merry of the CCCC new ball bowlers. 75 runs were scored in the first 9 overs with Arun making a quickfire 50. After that the batting was easy and runs were coming along at 5 runs per over until the 19th over when the required rate went up to 8 due to loss of some quick wickets. Then Tejas also known as the Silent giant unleashed his powers by smashing the ball all over the park and getting the rate down to less than 5 an over. 10 runs were required in the last 2 overs with 3 wickets in hand when CCCC who had fielded extremely well till then got a break through and the capitalized on it. The 29th over was a wicket maiden.

11 runs were required in the last 6 balls and when Kuldeep was bowled on the first ball of the last over it seemed that fate of the match was decided. But enter Bhavesh Patel and Karan Patel the young debutant. Bhavesh hit the 4th ball of the over for a 4 and then scored another 4 runs in the next 2 balls. 3 runs were required to win of the last ball and Bhavesh blasted the ball through midwicket and ran for 1 and got an over throw but the batsmen couldn’t make 3. So the match was tied, but it was one hell of a match and would be remembered for Karan’s wickets and Arun, Tejas and Bhavesh’s stupendous batting.

This was an amazing trip, not only the cricket played was top class but the home team’s hospitality was really great. There were a lot of jokes cracked on the way and the slogan was of the trip was “Chad gaya upar re, atariya pe lotan kabootar re” by Kisan Patel.