Wesleyan Cricket Club ends 1999 with 3 losses
After three months of practice and countless 3 and 4 a-side games, we were ready to take on some of the other Universities before winter. So we travelled to New Haven to take on Yale on September 18th.
With Hurricane Floyd having abated just in time, the game got underway as scheduled. Sanjai and myself opened the bowling (after Yale won the toss) and I found myself drifting down legside too many times in my first spell. The Yale openers weren't getting too many off the bat. Sanjai bowled a tight spell and I took a wicket in my 2nd over, which was overruled by a dubious no-ball call.
Ragoo and Zaki came on as our change bowlers and met with immediate success. Ragoo's fast spinners, mixed with some wides as well, accounted for 4 of their top order batsmen and Sanjai came back to claim their captain, Gideon, and Yale were 63/6.
88/6 in 24 overs and we were still in with a good chance to bowl them out for under 125, but sensible hitting by their batsman took them to 163 allout, in 35 overs.
Dominik and Ranga opened our innings and after 3 overs, we were 14/0. We were being just as strict with their wide balls as well. But the procession soon began and our batsman could not cope with the Yale bowling and we folded for 67 runs in just 18 overs, with 34 extras.
The following month we made the trip to U.Mass (Amherst) for our 2nd game. Amid a picturesque fall-setting, the game got underway with us batting first. Niladri and Ranga opened our innings, with instructions to just hang in there, which they did very well. After 12 overs we were 44/0 with more than half the runs coming from wides. Ranga was runout after the score had reached 50 in the 16th over, and once again, a procession started. Dominik hung in their 'til the end but with everyone else falling for scores under 5, we were allout for 76 in 32.3 overs.
The U.Mass openers played very cautiously but the first bowling change brought immediate success as Dominik clean-bowled their opener with a very slow ball. I took a wicket in the next over and U.Mass were 28/2. Sanjai came back after a brief break and proceeded to run through their middle order, with 4 quick wickets. At 61/6, we were in with a slim chance, but 76 was too small a total to defend and we lost by 4 wickets. A few catches also went down this time but I doubt it made any difference in the end.
After two postponements due to weather and a ridiculous 3 a.m. cancellation due to the Head of the Charles Regatta, we finally made the trip to Boston to play Brown. We reached Franklin Park only to find out that the ground was being used for a cross-country event, and Brown hadn't even shown up yet! Well, they finally did arrive and after a comical drive-around the neighborhood we finally found them at the new location, Franklin Fields.
There was no mat, and the concrete pitch was at least 25 yards long. The game finally got underway as their pizza-munching umpires came out and struggled to signal wides while eating. Of course, that was no excuse for our wayward bowling which enabled Brown's South African batsman, Dion Kay to tear our attack to shreds and register a century in a 25 overs game. Brown scored an imposing 200/3!
Chasing 8 runs an over wasn't really option so we decided to get some batting practice. With the pitch crumbling and several balls being called "dead" for not bouncing at all, batting was going to be difficult. On top of that, Brown tried several bowlers, most of whom were bowling slow full-tosses which were usually out of our reach. That explains the 50 extras in our total of 105!
The competitive part of our debut season thus ended with 3 losses. We certainly gained a lot of experience and our bowling and fielding showed a lot of character (except against Brown) but the batting was going to need a lot of work in the off-season. Sanjai took 7 wickets in 3 matches while I had the highest run tally of 20 runs. Niladri and Ranga registered our only 50 run partnership, against U.Mass.

Swarna Basu
5.18.2000
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