Kurlavale Kup LeGaye

I had been to dombivli for witnessing an inter saraswat match on 15/01/2006, thought of writing it down on my blog. I thought that it would be better to pen down the things that happened off the field with some infield excitement and catchy moments, because I’m pretty bored of the cricketing column of the newspaper which are filled with cuisine called ganguly served in different magnificent dishes with some toppings every now and then. One thing for sure is that my narration wouldn’t be better or comparable to the expert columnist of the daily newspaper and secondly I don’t know much of the names of the people involved in this event. It would be incomplete without the names of these people but putting all the names would look like a census list which I was not there for. But actually I was hoping to get a place in some playing eleven just for the sake of playing which I hadn’t done for almost 2 years of the sport I savor the most.

Some history to start with.

This event was started last year and the brains behind this event were the GSB youth wing of dombivli. This year it was initiated, coordinated by two persons namely Nagendra Bhat and Prashant Kini, ofcourse there was the help from the elder members too.

How the day went for me

The whole event was to be started at 8:30 in the morning on a beautiful Sunday morning of 15/01/2006. All the organizing members and the team members of the first encounter were called at 8:00 am itself. So I was accompanying my cousin brother, the official scorer of the match. We reached a bit late though the teams had arrived for the first encounter of the day. All the arrangements were made the commentary box, the pitch etc. Now at around 9:00 am it was time to start the matches. As per our traditional values any event would start with a puja to god and breaking of coconut. The same was here the inaugural puja and lighting up of lamps was done by Mr. B.G Pai, Yogesh shenoy and yogesh shenoy’s father. After the puja at the commentary box it was time to break the coconut at the pitch, this was done by Mr B.G. Pai, after which the toss was done between the two teams who had the first schedule for the day it was between GSB dombivli and RSB dombivli. The toss was won by GSB dombivli and put the RSB team to bat. It was an easy cake for the host team though and the GSB dombivli team won in the end. I had the opportunity to be a spectator and that to be in the commentator’s box. One person was pestering our official scorer about the surety of wining of the RSB team (since her brother was also there in the RSB team). The commentary of the proceedings was done by Sai (Sainath pai) and Ashwin kamath.

The second match was between GSB Seva Mandal Sion and GSB kurla. The kurla team won the match but one exciting thing was the hattrick wicket taken by vignesh of GSB seva mandal Sion. It was a splendid piece of bowling with two wickets in last two balls of the first over and the third in the very first ball of his second over, this was the first time that any bowler had hattrick this tournament. This is a record set this year only, the commentators confirmed that even last year nobody had achieved this feat and Vignesh being first one to achieve. The third match was between khardanda and saraswat from santacruz. This match was another one sided match with santacruz team winning it without loosing any wicket. The commentary team was joined by Mr. U.P. Pai. One thing everybody would like to do is leg pulling of the engaged couples (yet to marry ones) and the same was here, Sai (recently engaged) was not in the team of GSB Dombivli as he had made up his mind to play in the longer version of the game (life) than be in he shorter version (Everybody would love to play a longer version of the game of life). Later on he was found having some practice of cricket with his would be wife. The intermediate moments of the cricket proceeding were filled in by singtunes and ringtunes of mobile phones (they couldn’t get a cdman as planned earlier). Both the organizers Nagendra bhat and prashant kini were looking a bit excited or to say somewhat impatient to see that everything worked as per the plan. At around 12 o’clock in the noon I thought of having some breakfast, it was missal pav and tea. Coming back to the game it was the last league match between the borivili team and the wadala team. The star attraction was the superb batting performance of guru who took on sunil of borivili to 18 runs in an over with 2 sixes and 1 four, eventually the wadala team wining the match and making it to the semis.

Now that the league match was over and the lineup for semi finals was ready it was time for some real action on the field. One thing I really appreciated was the voices of cats and dogs that were beautifully reproduced by Mr. C.N.Prabhu. when he did it for the first time I thought that it was from some mobile but looking around I couldn’t get one near the mike but when he did it the second time I came to know that it was him (I was sitting next to him in the commentary box). I didn’t have my lunch neither did any of the host team members. It was time for the first semifinal match between the host team (the winner of the tournament last year and the favorites for this year) and saraswat santacruz. By this time I had moved from the commentary box to a different place of the ground with some new friends who were introduced to me by Chetan. We saw the host team struggling to get some runs initially but later on they put on a respectable score of 58 for the loss of 2 wickets in 8 overs. It was time for the santacruz team for batting. The host team had made a good show of bowling till the last over, and santacruz team required 19 runs to win in the last over. It was difficult task to get those runs but not impossible. One thing for sure is that mihir will haunt even in the nightmares of one person who bowled the last over. Mihir took his team to an unbelievable victory by scoring the required 19 runs in the last over. This victory had the winning team in excitement (which was obvious) and resulting in an unwanted incident (one of the team member went onto uproot all the wickets with his legs, which I thought was unethical and not good for the spirit of the game too) later on there was a heated drama between one of the organizing member and the santacruz team. It was later settled down by the person admitting his fault and terming it was due to sheer excitement of the victory. The host team was low after an unbelievable loss even though they were in the winning seat. This is what the game is all about, as I have heard many a times that the “game is not over till the last ball is bowled”. It looked very true today in this particular match. I went for having lunch with my bro and my friends (old and new ones). The recipe was pullao, salad and kurma. It was really good to have it, though the home team didn’t enjoy it as they would have liked to.

The second semifinal match was between kurla and wadala. Though there was not much of an excitement as it looked like a one sided match. The kurla team looked solid in front of the wadala team, they made a good score and later on won the match.

Now it was time for the grand final between santacruz and kurla team. The kurla team won the toss and elected to bat. The kurla team as in the previous matches started of slowly but later on increased their speed of scoring and set a victory target of 65 for the santacruz team. The start was shaky as they lost their 1^st wicket early. One thing was clear that wadala team had picked venkat of kurla team as the target and were hitting the ball near him duly because of his sloppy fielding. They had taken almost 12 to 15 runs around him. After the change in field position of venkat another wicket fell. One thing for sure was that had it not been venkat bowling an over santacruz team would have scored more runs around him. The tormentor (Mihir) of the previous match couldn't take his team to victory, he got out due to a beautiful catch taken by Jaywant in the deep. In the end kurla team won the final.

It was time for prize distribution ceremony and the dignitaries were Mr. B.G.Pai., Mr. V.M.Nayak, G.S.Nayak, Ratnakar.Bhat. and Vinayak Kamath (Representative of youth wing). All the winning and the runner-up team members were given a momentary medals with the GSB Dombivli logo on it. The player of the series was given to Jaywant Bhandarkar, the best batsman to Ganesh Shanbhag and the best bowler to Rohan Nayak, all the three from the kurla team. Sai had called both captains for a small talk and the captain of kurla team confessing that last year when they were runners-up, he had made up his mind that they would win it this time. The captain of the runners-up team told that they would come next year and go for the kill for winning the trophy. Everybody was happy and pleased about the arrangements. One thing I could observe is that some of the santacruz team members had decided that they would go for the trophy next year. Now the big question does history repeats its trend? Well have to wait till next year for that.

The two key and important persons nagendra and prashant kini received three cheers from all of the youth wing members and me too, simply because the arrangements were top class and setting up the example ahead to other organizers the other saraswat teams were planning to match this level or even outperform.