CricEd

It was a rapid-fire but a fruitful season for the boys. Both our U13 teams have now played all their games barring one that is scheduled in August.  A team, led by Ismail Omar, played 9 games and won 7, lost 1 and got a walkover over Fossum. Haugerud U13, against whom we have lost three games in last three years proved to be our nemesis again. We lost the first game against them in the penultimate ball by 7 wickets. Haugerud's Husnain Masood had hit such huge sixes in that game that anyone's moral could have gone down. But a week later, the boys bounced back nicely. We made a plan to bowl slow yorker length balls to Masood and boys executed beautifully, getting him out in the second over. Following that the Haugerud team got all out giving us a modest total of 64 that the boys achieved in the 7th over without loosing any wickets.  The take away from this season would be the courage shown by Haider Ali and Pranaov Ranjith to open the bowling against Haugerud despite knowing how...

  2020 will remain a landmark year for people who lived through the first global pandemic in the 21st century. For me it will remain a year when I started with cricket coaching. That year in September when the first wave of Covid-19 was dying down, Bijeyata, my partner in crime, was asked by our cricket club, Vestli CK, to join hands for coaching the U13 boys’ team. She was looking for weekend jobs then and was happy to oblige. I started hanging out with her at the sessions and contributed when required. Speaking for both of us, it was a dive down the deeper end as we came with zero experience of cricket/sports coaching. However, both of us had our share of ‘teaching’ experience coming from homes with teaching as a staple profession. As fate would have planned it within a short time, the main coach of the U13 team had to leave and that is when Bijeyata and I had to take full control of the squad. While there was a decent six months of gap between us starting and taking over the ...

First NCF Women Series game in 2022 The teams were called Vikings and Eagles. Farial and Pooja (myself) were captains for Vikings and Eagles respectively. Vikings won the toss and decided to bat. Eagle’s went into the game, 1 bowler short as Raksha was injured. We planned to go with main bowlers (medium pace) for first 6 overs and then rotate between a spinner and new bowlers in the middle overs and bring back the medium pacers in the last 6 overs. The start went perfect as Hina bowled out Farial on the first ball the later faced. Then on Ramya and Bijeyata built a good partnership. We missed one catch at point (Farima), and two half chances (both Pooja), one by the bowler and one at short cover in the first 7 overs. Between 7 th to 14 th over, Pooja bowled at one end restricting the runs while we leaked several extras from the other end. Luckily, for us, both the batters did not change gears. We could restrict them by blocking there scoring areas with strong fielders. However, we fa...

In the second game, Drammen won the toss and put us to bat. In the first game balling lines were not very consistent, so we planned to score even of the wide balls by changing the batting stance. Haider and Pranaov opened the innings and Haider was the aggressive one. He hit two 6s in the first and third over. Pranaov was excellent between the wickets and called for every opportunity to steal a single. We were at 40 in just three overs. In the 4th over, Haider got caught but Pranaov took the mantle and hit a boundary next ball. Rushank was unlucky with the bat as tried to hit a loose ball but got caught at mid-off. After that Pranaov and Dylan kept scoring in singles and doubles and took the score to 77 for 2 by the eight over. We then introduced Ismail and Saad for batting. Saad got out soon but Ismail continued with Hashim and took us to 109/4 in 10 overs. Ismail scored 24 of 9 deliveries with 3 boundaries and 1 six and really capitalized on the base that Haider and Pranaov created i...

 Vestli U13 A played back back to games against Drammen on 30th May. Two members from the core team were unavailable including the captain, so we invited Dylan and Hashim to join the squad who have since moved to the U15 squad.  In the first game, our stand-in captain Ismail won the toss and chose to bat first. Ismail and Arib opened the innings and gave a solid start. Arib had an unfortune dismissal in the third over when he dragged the ball onto the leg-stump try to play a flick. Kevin then joined Ismail and they went steady scoring 59 in 7 overs. We then introduced Saad and Hashim to bat at the beginning of the 8th over. Saad was caugth at mid off in the 10th over. Ismail went back for last three balls. Hashim and Ismail played till the end took the score to 85 for 2. The innings had nearly 25 wide/no balls so the boys did not get many balls to strike. Pranaov started the balling attack and just on the 4th ball got a nick that was cleanly collected by our 'senior' keeper Dy...

Vestli U13 A team had to play against United with just 7 players on the ground as 4 of our little champs were sick that day. Our batters did quite well and took us to 91 in the 9th over. In the 10th over, Ismail joined Pranaov. Together they made 23 runs in that over including 19 from Ismail in only 6 balls. before that Kevin played an aggressive innings and scored 16 in 13 balls. We gave United a target of 115. With only 5 fielders in the outfield and United captain, Aditya in full song, the match was humdinger throughout the second innings. Ismail and Rushank got wicket but the match was getting tilted towards United. Aditya reached his half century in the 8th over and United needed 31 in the last two overs which looked very much possible. But then Haider and Pranaov bowled two excellent overs together with sharp fielding from all the lads and restricted United to 101. Aditya remained unbeaten at 61 an we wonder what could have happened if he strategized to keep the strike for the la...

Vestli U13 B team with beginners had a tough start of the season with four games against experienced sides like City, Vestli A and Fossum. But the players kept their heads high and spirits up. In the last game against Fossum they bowled excellently but could not counteract some good hitting by Bilal from Fossum. Yesterday they met United U13, a new team just like them. This made up for an exciting context . Our boys were pumped with their bowling performance against Fossum and chose to ball after winning the toss. The first 4 overs went flawlessly and United were 4 down in no time. Nishal was our star with the ball. But then United Captain held his end and batted till the end with a brilliant 45 in 28 balls. This gave us a steep chase of 93 in 10 overs. Captain Aarav gave a brisk start but tides turned our way when Ali went to the crease and started hitting back to back boundaries. Ali made a quick 20 in 14 balls with 3 boundaries and 1 six before getting out. At this stage the game wa...