This weekend was dedicated to cricket. Starting Friday, 31st July to Sunday, 2nd August, Guttsta Wicked Cricket Club (GWCC) organized their annual Midnight Cup 2009 tri-team cricket tournament. All the matches were held at the club's home ground located at Kolsva. The 3 teams this year were the Mighty Wanderers Cricket Club (from UK), G20 Jubilee XI (consisting of non-regular players associated with Guttsta and other clubs) and the home team (GWCC). I was part of the GWCC team. All the clubs had a good mix of both regular "hardcore" cricketers, old-timers who used to play cricket and still want to play for the love of the game and few novices who want to know what the heck is this game about. The important point to mind here is that the motive for these matches are not only for the sake of playing, but this is for the love of the game and also to popularize and promote the game amongst the people of Sweden. And I can tell you after this tournament experience that "All those who play baseball can turn out to be a cricketer par excellence."Friday, 31st July
I was there at the ground along with my friend from Västerås by 10:30AM on friday. It was bit cloudy with predictions of rain, but the enthusiasm of cricketers was enough to beat such hurdles. The first thing surprising which was I saw on the ground when I reached was the presence of TV cameramen. Hmm, thats interesting, there's some coverage for our matches. I realized that this tournament has attracted the local TV channels to see whats there in "cricket"? The first match was between Jubilee XI and Mighty Wanderers. Before the start of the match, there was the initial round of introductions and photo sessions. Myself and Naveen are the umpires for the match. The pitch had good grass on it and it was moist due to overnight rain. The match turned out to be a low scoring game with occasional interruptions due to rain. Mighty Wanderers batted first and could score only 73 runs and they were all out in 29 overs. Jubilee XI batted comfortably, but not without any hiccups and they were able to pull off a good win. I have seen that many of my Swedish friends usually keep cursing the weather a lot. And today also it was the same case. It had become very cold by the time the match ended. Now, it was time for the most fantastic innings - the barbecue grill... Can you imagine having a barbecue after a cricket match? This was the best part and all the players had a nice time around. Cricket is of course one thing, but the most important factor was the teams coming together and playing in a land where cricket is an entirely new game - 22 players on the ground wasting the whole day either standing and/or running.Saturday, 1st August
It was raining in Västerås when we left for
Kolsva. I was thinking whether we can have the match at all today. But when we reached the ground around 10:15AM, it was bright and sunny at this place. I could see now how the weather can be so different in Sweden within 50-60kms. The match was between Jubilee XI and GWCC. Our captain won the toss and elected to field. Our opponents could pile up a total of 113 in their allotted quota of 35 overs. The pitch was difficult to play on. The ball keeps low occasionally and it was difficult to hit. We had our strategy in place for chasing this total and we romped home very cofortably by the 28th over. I scored 39 runs. The pitch was as usual the slower side and it was just not possible for me to play the power shot - somehow was able to push along with singles and twos.Sunday, 2nd August
Now, today is the crunch match between Mighty Wanderers and GWCC. Two teams have already won one match and so Mighty is going to be serious on the ground. The weather looked very good for a cricket match. All strategies were in place and we planned to bat if we win the toss. Unfortunately, we lost the toss and we fielded. Mighty Wanderers started off well watching every ball and scoring off the loose deliveries. They lost only one wicket till the drinks break and the score was around 3 runs an over up to that point. Just after the drinks break, Mighty players started to loosen up and began to accelerate the run-rate. The ball was coming right on to the bat at a decent height and Jan (one of the batsman) was able to connect a few clean hits to the fence. At the end of the innings, they piled up a good total of 162 on the board and Jan was unlucky to be run-out on 99 off the last ball of the innings. Now, it was a tough task for us as 162 is not going to be an easy chase especially for a 2nd innings score since the pitch would have become very slow. We began our batting cautiously with me and Naveen opening the
innings. We negotiated the good spells of their new ball bowlers and scored at a healthy rate of 3.5 runs per over till the 12th over when Naveen got out LBW trying to sweep a ball from the middle stump. That was the start of our slide. I stayed at the wicket for another 5 overs and threw my wicket away due to lack of concentration. I had scored 31 runs. The required run-rate began climbing up slowly as the slow pitch made it very difficult for our batsmen to score runs. Our team started losing wickets on a regular basis too. There was bit of a scare for the opponents when Amit came into bat and hit 3 consecutive sixes of one of their spinners which changed the equation a little bit. But, the momentum was already lost by then and we were all out in the 34th over of the innings losing the match by 37 runs. Now that each of the teams had one win each, the NRR calculations started and Mighty Wanderers turned out to be the winners of the Midnight Cup 2009. The whole tournament was really fantastic in the sense that except for minor weather related problems on the first day, the remaining two matches were held without any trouble whatsoever. The fun quotient was at the maximum.
This was my first tournament outing in Swedish cricket. I love the ground. You can't have a ground with such a surrounding anywhere in the world. This is the perfect place to have a wonderful game of cricket... Only green forests till your eyes can see... The surroundings refresh you, rejuvenates you... More than playing the game in its full spirit, it is the enthusiasm of the players and the team spirit and camaraderie which mattered a lot. Our team had members from several nationalities, but the interactions and togetherness between the players were at its best. When we say that a team sport gets people together, it really does. The bottom line was that everybody had lot of fun with Beer, Barbecue, Cricket (BBC) :)
As already mentioned, the event was covered on TV and also on print. There were visitors too on the ground who came to watch the matches after seeing the report on the TV and also the schedule on the newspaper. For those who are interested, here are two links where the event was shown in the form of short clips in two different TV channels... In both the clips, the umpire on the ground is none other than Yours Truly, but only the back is seen... Thats the end of the commentary... I could not take many photographs as I was on the centre of the ground most of the time, still there are a few here... I am waiting now for the next round of friendly matches coming up in another 2 weeks time from now... Till then, you all have a great time ahead... Hej da..http://svt.se/2.33831/1.
http://tv4play.se/nyheter/lokala_nyheter/vasteras?videoId=1.1121074&selId=1.1062633&currPage=0
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