Wednesday, October 6, 2010

25 Mar 2009

LoBaT (the Lack of Brains and Trust) have issued a media release claiming all credit
for last weekend's semifinal result. As you are probably aware, we won the toss,
batted and scored 319. We then rolled them out for 40! So we won by 279 runs…
In fact, LoBaT go as far as saying their strategy was pure genius. The obvious
question is what was this strategy. Well, it turns out the strategy was two-pronged.
While the elite members of LoBat were waiting to be rescued from the room they
inadvertently locked themselves in last week, they decided to identify the winning
formula of our team by reviewing the team's past victories.
They realised that all the matches where we scored a lot of runs and thrashed the
opposition by an innings occurred when the top order unselfishly handed over all
responsibility to the middle order who then rapidly handed over responsibility to the
lower order. We then relied on the opposition to capitulate due to no fault of ours.
This meant that we were going to be reliant on the lower order to make a great
contribution. Armed with this piece of intelligence, LoBat immediately ordered
Stanley to stop scoring centuries and asked him to be unselfish by allowing the rest of
the team to bat. They then also announced the batting line up had Stanley at the top
and the rest of players listed at number 11! This they said was a fool proof strategy to
get back to our winning ways. Of course, it was not quite clear who the fools were.
A far simpler strategy would have been to have Stanley as part of the lower order,
but LoBat were not accepting any questions. Stanley kept his end of the bargain,
not wanting to upset the fragile old egos of the LoBat. He was back in the hut in
the second over. Mind you, normally being back in the second over would not have
stopped Stanley from scoring about 40 runs first, but in this instance, he obeyed
orders and hadn't scored more than a couple.
This immediately put the cat amongst the pigeons. The skipper looked at all his
number elevens and picked one of them saying he was being given a promotion, not
because he deserved it, but simply to piss off Ricky.
This resulted in the Dias & Las (D&L) combination once again finding themselves
out in the middle. As usual, they were facing a pumped up opposition that had
believed they had won the match now that Stanley was out. Truth is even if the
opposition didn’t believe this, everyone of us was of this opinion. We did, however,
put up a brave face.
Most of you will recall that D&L are the founders of a world famous D-L formula
used to calculate a fair score for each batsman. The revised 2009 DL formula now
factors in the freshness of the bowlers and fielders, the sleepiness of the batsmen, the
shine on the new ball, how much time the batsman had spent doing gardening and
blowing leaves off the roof before getting to the grounds and a host of other intricate
factors. Based on this, D&L had already put on 100 runs even before padding up.
Well, to make a short story really long, Las scored a swashbuckling 43 while
his partner carried out his usual art of making simple bowling look unplayable.
Eventually Las departed after setting a decent foundation. This brought the next
number eleven batsman to the crease. Prasad was in no mood to bat although Rajitha
kept shouting ‘Stay there’ between his snoring.
He departed shortly making way for Charuka who has been batting beautifully in
recent times with 9 fingers. He came out and made the bowlers look like grade
schoolers. His partner kept asking him to calm down so as not to make him look too
bad. Nothing doing. Charuka’s partner finally put an end to his misery and departed
quietly.
This kicked the innings into gear. Well at least, it resulted in Rajitha waking up and
making his way to the middle. Charuka and Rajitha started going hammer and tongs.
Occassionally Rajitha even shouted ‘Stay There’ to himself to keep himself going.
This was in between his kissing of his bat. He has got quite a lover relationship

going on with that bat. Fortunately the rubber on his bat doesn’t keep coming off like
Ricky’s.
Eventually, however, after his standard 33 runs, he threw in the towel and asked Nirav
to take over. It was not quite clear what Nirav had had for lunch, but everyone wanted
some. He hit anything that was close to him to the boundary with disdain. The fielders
were careful to keep their distance from him between overs. He clocked 50 in no time.
Even the neighbours whose houses were pelted didn’t have enough time to come out
and complain.
Then Sameera went out and ran himself out unselfishly to give Ricky a chance
to spend more time out there. But Rambo jogged out to the middle first and then
jogged back to simply warm himself up to bowl. Amitab and Ricky were finally out
there as the last pair. Ricky hammered one straight to a distant fielder and stood his
ground while Amit was halfway down the pitch. There was an exchange of a variety
of noises between the two of them that ended in Ricky screaming ‘banchot’. They
both walked back to the pavilion hand in hand – Ricky swearing and kicking the
ground the whole way back while Amit was laughing along with the entire pavilion.
The scorebook was listed with 8 bowlers from our side. Unfortunately due to Rambo
and the skipper’s inability to bowl rubbish like the rest of the bowlers, there was a
steady procession of batsmen back and forth. Rambo was on a hat trick twice and
ended the day with 6 wickets. The skipper bagged the rest. The other six bowlers got
to polish the ball. Sacha was promised a bowl, but as always when the skipper has the
ball in hand, the next in line spends the whole innings warming up. The skipper told
him that he wanted him warmed up for the finals.
Charuka and a couple of the guys then rushed to see the end of the Parammatta-Seven
Hills clash and learnt that Parammatta had played Moin Khan as a keeper eventhough
he was not on the card. So although they won, it has left a question mark as to who we
will meet in the finals.
LoBat are now struggling to come up with a strategy without knowing who the
opposition is. They have said, however, that whatever the strategy is, they will not
be sharing it with anyone to make sure it doesn’t leak to the press. Thank goodness
for that – the whole team is hoping they will keep it to themselves. How’s Zhat?

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