My Maiden Cricket Tour Diary: Day 6



Final Frontier
08 January 2012
After yesterdays thumping win we were all pumped up for our final match today against Oberoi International School. The experience for the last 6 days was amazing. We have come together as Team and matured as individuals. For the first time we were alone without our parents taking care of us and away for playing the beautiful game of cricket in the land where it all began as far as Indian Cricket is concerned. We are more confident cricketers now and we all are more focused to improve our game from here on.  

Today match was starting early than our previous matches. Our reporting time in the Hotel Lobby was 6:30am and we left the Hotel sharp at 7am. It was a long journey for us and it took almost 50 minutes to reach the venue. Oberoi International School is situated at Goregaon and once we reached the ground, we found it was lush green ground, by far the best ground we have played in Mumbai so far.  We were told that IPL teams like Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have practiced on this particular venue.

Again we won the toss and we elected to bat first. I went out to open the innings with my partner Devvrat. I was very confident after yesterdays inspired batting and wanted to end the tour on high. We lost the 1st wicket in the very first over of the match. Our wicketkeeper batsman Mayank walked down to join me in the middle. We steadied our ship and we had more than 100 runs partnership for the 2nd wicket. I got out to a very good delivery at a personal score of 51. Mayank was going strong today and like everyone else he also wanted to end the tour on high. He was looking good from the ball one and was middling the balls. Mayank score 158 not out and helped the team to post a formidable score on the score board. We scored 272 runs in 30 over’s. As I have blogged earlier that we back in Jaipur were more exposed in playing 20-20 games. This Mumbai tour was also very special that we learned how pace our innings in longer version of the game. Though we only played 1 40 over’s and rest were all 25 or 30 over’s games but we learned our lesson very well.

Today’s match was also special as Mr. Martin Gleeson; who is the CEO of SEDIL and Cricket India Academy was present for our match. Martin Sir is a level 3 coach from Cricket Australia and whenever he is Jaipur he takes special sessions for us. It is just fantastic that we put up a great batting display in front of him and our beloved Azar Sir. Both were very Happy with our batting display. Martin Sir especially congratulated me for taking the initiative of writing the blog everyday and he said that he is being following the posts everyday even when he was in Australia for his holidays.      

After lunch we started very well. Our Captain and new ball bowler Aniket Mangal gave us the 1st break again. In all our matches Aniket has been fantastic. He has lead us very well and bowled his heart out in every match. We wrapped our opponent with only 71 on the score board. A superb bowling performance by Vinay, he took 5 wickets in the match. It was fitting finale for us. We started the tour low when we lost to Amre Clinic but we gathered ourselves as team and we performed better in every match.

After the game we all returned to our Hotel. We were allowed to have fun in the fantastic facility of Kohinoor Health Club. We spent time in swimming pool and few played Table Tennis also. Then we went to freak out a bit to a nearby mall called Phoenix Mall. We all were asked to assemble for dinner at 8:30pm and we were informed that Martin Sir will also join us. Martin Sir spent time with everyone in the Team individually and shared his knowledge and expertise with us. He also gave away prizes of Best Batsman to Mayank and Best Bowler to Aniket. Mayank scored 225 in 4 matches with average of 125 runs and Aniket took 11 wickets with one 5 wicket haul. 

Tomorrow is a day off for us. We are going to visit few historic places in Mumbai and looking forward to have fun.

The tour is near its end and so is the blog update. But I will share the beautiful moments with photographs once I am back in Jaipur. Thank you for following and encouraging us during our tour.

It’s the last Match Update from Aadarsh Nagarajan not the final postJ

Until next time….

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