I am the first one to believe that this HICC team can do wonders if we just support each other. In one of the previous online threads Bhavesh said about forgetting the mistakes and concentrating on the next ball, which is a very good example of supporting your teammates in worst times. In one of the matches while fielding at the boundary line I heard Yogesh Kaka shouting every time there was a misfield or a dropped catch, but what he was shouting were the magic words for most cricketers. They were “Come on boy, you know that you are better than that and can do much better than that, show me what you can do”. Those words can puff a lot of energy into anyone, who has a heart to learn from his mistakes.

We all have to keep up the energy level up even though we are not getting wickets and the batsmen are hammering our bowlers for lot of runs. Once we start cheering the bowlers they would be pumped up and would try to do their best and maybe can get the better of the batsmen.  Our keepers should always try to get into the skin of the batsmen by constant chirping and remarks, and no one in this league has the temperament to put aside the remarks and play their game, so the batsmen may end up playing a rash stroke and we can get a wicket.

The same is with our batsmen at the crease, the non striker should try and appreciate the shot played by the batsmen on strike just to keep his concentrations and confidence up, as even the opposing team can sledge and make comments on our batsmen resulting in his concentration lapse. So the non strikers have to take care of the batsmen on strike.

One more thing that Yogesh Kaka mentioned about was running between the wickets, once a new batsman arrives to the crease the set batsmen should take the initiative of running hard and trying to take most of the strike to get the acceleration in score and also to get the new batsmen set. And when I say acceleration I don’t mean going for fours and sixes, we could rotate the strike and try to get about 4-5 runs an over without taking a risk. And also if the new batsmen is uncomfortable against a certain bowler the non striker should make sure that he gets the batsmen off the strike by maybe a quick single or something, that would prevent the batsmen’s confidence level.

I have read a lot cricket related books and once I came across these lines that really describes your positive intent in the field while batting it read “A good batsmen is not who scores 4s and 6s every balls, a good batsmen is the one who scores a single on a good ball and may be a 4 or a 6 on a bad ball”. If we can keep this attitude of scoring a single on a good ball, the bowler would get frustrated and try something different and would end up bowling a loose ball, and we all know how our batsmen can take care of such a ball.

So guys lets just be positive and get in the game with an attitude that we haven’t been defeated once yet, we have lost matches, and when I mean lost I mean that they haven’t defeated us yet we have lost on our own by not playing to our regular standards that we generally do.

Remember “When the going gets tougher, the tough gets going”. And who better than us can know that who’s the toughest when it comes to fighting back with our backs to the wall.

Good luck  fellas!