The Infosys Hyderabad Cricket League Experience

This post of mine is not as much of a “post” as it is a “rant/crib/blabber”, whichever one you like to choose. So, go ahead with that in mind as there might not be anything you find interesting in here.

It was the evening of June 4th, 2010, when I was answering the question, “Man, 5 wickets in a 12 over game. Don’t you think that is a bit too much?” I was in the post match presentation of our first match and it was the first game for me in Infosys Hyderabad. Before the game I was not sure if I will play or not and I was more than happy to see my name in the playing XI. After that there was no looking back, as I took a good catch at the third man boundary and another sharp one at short mid wicket.In between I was called up to bowl the 8th over(I myself was surprised as I expected myself to be needed only as a back up bowler, if one of the regulars fail). I started off with a wide, a front foot no ball and the free hit that followed was slogged over covers for a boundary. So, I had conceded 6 runs off 1 ball and cricket didn’t seem to be all that easy a game then. However, that was the time when things turned around and I ended up getting 4 wickets in my first two overs, conceding 8 runs.I had accounted for both the icon players of MFG – Tigers and their captain as well. My third over was the last of the innings and I did get a bit carried away while bowling that, giving away 20 runs and taking a wicket. Hence, my debut finished with figures of 3-0-28-5. 9 runs an over is about par score here at the small Infosys cricket ground so I was over the moon with my performance, which eventually earned me the man of the match award. We were chasing a target of 93 from 12 overs and we were home in the 8th over itself, thanks to a stroke filled 58 off 29 balls from our captain-wicket keeper- opener, Atul Sir.

Things haven’t been that smooth afterwards and in our next game against The Aryans.  I was called upon to bowl when both their openers were set. Our opening bowlers had completely lost the plot and after 4 overs The Aryans had a score of 55/0 and things weren’t looking good for us. Bowling changes were not working and I was called upon to bowl from the ESA end(the same end from which I took 5 wickets). I started off with my customary wide outside the off stump  and then a good length ball that took off like anything, with the keeper(standing up) barely managing to hold on to that. The next good length I bowled was slogged over covers for a boundary, resulting in me over pitching the next one, which sailed over mid off for a six in no time! I was taken for 14 runs in that over. Statistics in cricket are funny and they don’t tell you the complete story. If someone was present at the ground and watched me bowl the over he would have realised that I had bowled two bad balls, one of which was hit for a six and a double was taken off the other one. Apart from that, I had barely strayed in my line, unlike our so called “strike bowlers” who fed the batsmen on the leg stump during the powerplay overs, with packed off side fields! I did not get another over after that and I knew that the captain was losing his faith in me. We conceded 121 runs in 12 overs and, given the batting we have got, we thought it was chasable easily. Our makeshift opener Anupam got out the first ball and then in the second over their captain, Mayank, ripped the heart of our batting apart when he took a hat trick and we were 4 down for 5 runs after the second over and the game seemed as good as over. However, we knew deep down that all 11 of us can hit the ball decently and the fact that we scored 106 runs off 10 overs after that would testify to that. We lost the game by 9 runs.After the game all of us bowlers got a good dressing down from our captain and the agenda for next practice session was “no one will bowl at the leg stump, come what may”. I stuck to that but in the process I could not get out of my old habit of over pitching or under pitching. What people don’t understand is that when you bowl in nets, you’re playing on a mat where the ball skids through but the bounce is not true, i.e. the bounce gets somewhat suppressed. When you’re playing on a pitch, the ball tends to bounce and carry a lot better. Hence, what is good length on a matting wicket might end up getting slaughtered in the match. However, after the practice my bowling was summarized as inconsistent. True, I had not bowled any wide, be it outside the leg stump or off stump.  

Our last and final league match was on June 22nd against HRD – Indians, the team that are billed up to be the tournament favourites and which is captained by my favourite player in the tournament, Sumit Sehrawat. 15 minutes before the match I came to know that I was left out of the playing 11. Kishore tried to convince me that I was “rested” but he wasn’t fooling anybody. I mean, you don’t “rest” a player when you go into a match knowing that a win will secure a place in the next round. I had that feeling of being left out right after the nets on the morning of the match but what shocked me was the guy who was my replacement… Harsha. My bowling in the nets was summed up as “over pitched” and his was “wayward”. It did show in the match as well, when he was called upon to bowl the second over and ended up giving away 13 runs (after our “strike bowler” Davis was taken for 13 in the first over as well). We again ended up giving away 50+ in the 4 powerplay overs and things weren’t looking great. Then came Ravi Dubey, our second icon player who had never bowled in the nets due to a back injury. He contained Sumit brilliantly and was our best bowler for the match. Our bowlers again pulled it back in the later stages and we restricted HRD – Indians to 111, a perfectly chasable score! Our batsmen started the chase well and we were left to get 43 off the final 5 overs with more than half of our side left to bat and two of the senior pros, Kishore and Ramesh(vice captain) at the crease. For some reason they were happy to take singles rather than trying to go hard at them and we were left to get 31 off the last 18 balls. That came down to 20 off 12 but now the problem was that Sumit had one over left.  He gifted us a boundrary off an overthrow and we were left to get 10 off the last over. It came down to 4 off 4, 3 off 3, 2 off 2 and then Madhu was run out in attempting what should have been a single easily. The match eventually ended in a tie. We are now dependent on the result of the last league match of our group, The Aryans vs MFG Tigers on 28th June, to see if we will progress to quarter finals.

The bowlers were again in the firing line in the post match talk by our captain but in all honesty, it was the batsmen’s fault. If the bowlers gave away so many runs initially, they only brought us back by restricting the opponents to 111. At one time HRD looked to  be set for a 140+ score and that would have been out of reach for us.  Our captain gave away his wicket after a well made 35 and the other so called experienced batsmen failed to steer us home. After the match we were told that “no one will play for charity” and performance will be the only critieria for selection.

In hindsight, yes, it is a team that plays and it is a team that wins or loses. Being left out of a playing 11 was a first for me and that will always haunt me.I do not have any personal grudges from anyone in the team and having watched all the teams play, I genuinely believe that our team has it to win the cup. What hurt me was the manner in which I was dropped. They keep on telling you “its ok if you over pitch or bowl wide on off stump” but please don’t bowl anything on the legs. In the first game, I was fearless, I was not thinking of anything else but bowling my best and at times experimenting, which got me the wickets. However, now things are different and “playing for my place” will always be at the back of my mind, even if I don’t want to think about it. For someone who has always been in charge of whichever team he’s played for, right from the junior school days to his college, for someone who was the only one from first year playing in the inter branch cricket tournament and forced his way into the team at the cost of settled seniors, this is a bit too much to take. Except for my college inter branch cricket team, I’ve always been the captain at whichever level we’ve played and today, when I’m dropped for someone who’s ready with childish excuses every now and then, it really hurts. On top of that you don’t have anyone to talk about these things either. However much I try to take my mind away from it, it just keeps coming back to haunt me. As of now, its fingers crossed for the next game and I hope some common sense prevails in the next selection, given we progress to quarter finals.

Mumbai Diary - 1

First of all, let me introduce you to the entertainer-in-chief for the rest of this post, Kanishk/Kanishka. It’s actually a ‘he’ and to be honest, I haven’t been able to figure out whether he actually uses the last ‘a’ in his name or not( I wonder if he himself knows that). The simple reason is that I have seen him use both the versions of his name with ease. I stick to the version sans the last ‘a’ for two reasons:

1. It’s shorter.
2. I recently mentioned to a few friends of mine that I went to Pune and stayed overnight at Kanishka’s place and their reaction made me realise how easily the longer version can be confused with the name of a girl and to what extent its meaning can be (mis)interpreted.

I’ve known him post my 10^th standard and in general I have no abnormal observations about him apart from what I am going to write. Kanishk is to good luck what Green Goblin was to Spiderman, what Mozilla is to Internet Explorer, what Pope V was to Galelio, what Zayed Khan is to hit films and what Virender Sehwag is to bowlers. In short, these two can’t co-exist. One eventually ends up killing the other and as my ill-fate would have it, Kanishk emerges victorious more often than not! To sum things up, if there ever was a percentile score assigned to person for having/causing ill-fate, my dear friend would be having a percentile similar to the CAT score of the brilliant minds who secure interview calls from IIM-A(B/C).

The second point of interest would be his (lack of) intelligence. I know he would not be taking too kindly to this aspersion but then, here are a couple of incidents. Just read through them and then you are left to decide for yourself:

Scene 1:  Me and Kanishk waiting at a bus stop(for a bus, in case you had any doubts!) after school. An overcrowded bus comes, I rush to the back door, Kanishk to the front door. I decide to give up after observing that 20 people were already occupying the footboard. Kanishk somehow clings to the front door. Now the bus starts moving. Kanishk looks back to see if I’ve made it(the bus is picking up speed constatnly). And, on finding me stranded at the stop itself(the bus is moving at its normal speed now), he decides to jump off, with his face still turned backwards(people with their IQ in triple figures would get down at the next stop or at least care to be facing forward when jumping off a bus), towards me. About 2 seconds later, there he was, lying on the road, flat on his face! The first reaction should have been to sprint through the distance of 50m and ask him if he was all right. But, when  you see that happen to a guy like him, you cannot resist laughing your stomach out and I was no exception! Thankfully, he didn’t get any visible sign of discomfort and he got up laughing.

Scene 2: Kanishk has travelled a good 80% of the country’s length, from Shimla(H.P.) to Manipal(Karnataka) to pay a ‘surprise’ visit to his girlfriend. He’s staying illegally in one of the vacant rooms of my college hostel and has run out of balance on his mobile. I went to class in the morning and asked him to be comfortable in my room and call me up from the landline phone of my room, in case he had any trouble. Now, the guy was so love struck that he could not wait to talk to her. And finally, in an act of utter and abject desperation, he called her up from the landline number. Even though girls are generally considered stupid, but there was no way in the world she was going to buy the lamest of excuses that there had been “some problem” in the airtel network, as a consequence of which a landline no. with a Manipal code was on display on her mobile when he called her up and that was how his surprise ended.

Now to the actual story:
We had written our 12^th boards and results were awaited.  It was that phase in which you were done writing all the engineering entrance exams (including IITs) and were hopeful enough of making it through to at least one of those(obviously, not expecting anything positive from the IITs until, of course we had the merit to rig-up the merit list upside down). Life was pretty much boring, with nothing to do whole day apart from watching TV, eating and lazing around in the house, getting used to being scolded by mummy for anything and everything, starting from waking up in the morning to taking a bath and have my meals on time. In short, life was missing adventure and that was the time when The Almighty decided to inject exactly that into it.

Myself and Kanishk had appeared for an entrance exam for getting a 5 year MBA-Tech course introduced by the famous(and VERY expensive) NMIMS, Mumbai. We had both been shortlisted for the second round, i.e. Personal Interview, which was to be conducted at their campus in Mumbai. Kanishk had been absconding from Delhi for the past few days and I had no idea where he was on the face of Mother Earth, if at all. I myself was wondering whether to attend the interview or not, until my brother forced me into getting my ticket reserved and preparing for the interview, due in less than a week’s time(8^th of June, to be precise). The trains to Mumbai were all booked and I booked my tickets in Goa Express, till Pune, from where my cousin brother would receive me and then I was all his responsibility. The train was to leave Hazrat Nizamuddin station, New Delhi at about 3pm. By 1 pm I was done with my packing and was going through the checklist and pretending to be listening to my dad’s famous “How to ensure a safe journey alone” speech (that I never actually follow, but listen nevertheless out of sheer respect).

That was the time when the dreaded K-factor struck. In hindisight, this blog post wouldn’t be born had that phone call not been made, but at that time it was the last thing on my mind. Kanishk called up from New Delhi railway station, asking me if I was going. He had just returned from his home with his dad and was in no mood to embark on a 24 hr train journey again. I cursed him internally, bid him goodbye  vocally and continued with my check list. Within half an hour, he called up again, saying that he will meet me up at station and he had “made up his mind” to go to the interview. Having known him for two years, I wasn’t really a stranger to his mood swings but honestly, even for a person like him, it crossed the line a little bit. So there we were, 2 hours later, negotating with the TTE as to how much he should pay to get an extra berth.

Now with Kanishk into the scheme of things, my travel plans were altered slightly. My interview was scheduled on 8^th of June and his was on the 12^th. We had decided we’ll come back together, which meant we’ll get 3 full days to explore Mumbai. The idea itself was exciting but there were quite a few hurdles to clear before that, one of which was to come to Pune station to receive us the next evening!

We reached Pune on the 7^th June(evening, with my interview due in Mumbai the next day at 9 am.) and as decided, Sonu bhaiya was there to receive us. We went to his flat and ate like we had never eaten or will never ever eat. We finished our dinner “hurriedly”(in about 30 mins) and then took towards the highway, relatively relaxed at the knowledge that Pune-Mumbai busles ply frequently till midnight. However, as I soon realized, I had not taken into consideration the K-factor that was accompanying us. At about 11 pm, we were standing on the highway, signalling thoughtlessly to any moving object which seemed capable of carrying us for 4 hours and dumping us in Mumbai. The buses/taxis were nowhere to be seen(the K-factor was making its presence felt) and it was foolish of us to expect private cars to stop by at midnight for 3 guys. At last our efforts did pay off.At 12:30am(8 hrs 30 mins to go for my interview), a good old commander budged. It was going to Mumbai to fetch the newspapers for the next day. He happily accomodated the three of us for Rs. 80 each and we were breathing much easier. It was about 4 am when we had our first sighter of Navi Mumbai and by the time we reached Andheri, it was 4:30(4 hrs and 30 mins to go for my interview and we didn’t have any place to stay yet!). The driver had guaged that we weren’t exactly looking for something on the lines of Burj-al-Arab and  told us that he’ll take us to the lodges/guest houses he knew and if we were lucky, one of the caretakers would excuse us for waking them up at that unearthly hour and allow us in. About half an hour and 4 guest houses (and an equal number of NOs) later, we found ourselves stretching on the bed of a guest house. We slept at 5:30 and woke up at 7, took our luggage and reached NMIMS, Ville Parle in time. I went in while Kanishk went away with Sonu bhaiya to the nearby Juhu beach. The formality called interview went smoothly and now was the time we had been looking forward to. Sonu bhaiya had to return to Pune the same day and we were shortly going to be on our own in Mumbai. We were worried about the boarding and lodging expenses there and that was when Kanishk’s uncle emerged onto the scene as the saviour(of our LOW four figure bank balance)and offered us free accomodation, which we shamelessly accepted. The fact that his family was out of station for a fortnight ensured that we did not cause him unreasonable hassles. One thing I cannot thank Kanishk enough for is his ability to provide me free shelter in unknown cities whenever I’ve really desired one(Mumbai and Pune are on the list as of now and hopefully the list will grow!). So, now both of us were on our own. Uncle’s job was going to keep him busy throughout the day, we had saved up on the boarding expenses and we were free to explore the city of Mumbai for the next 3 days. Well, this post has got longer than what would keep you interested and if at all you have survived it till now, wait for the next part, as that will contain the real (mis)adventure! 

....to be continued

Settling Down After 100 Days Of Madness!

First of all, let me tell you straightaway that the phrase “settling down” is not intended to mean matrimony in any way.

The Crazy Period:The mentioned period has been important to me in a lot of ways. I don’t like it, I don’t dislike it but most certainly I will never forget it. It has transformed me from a trainee to a professional and now I’m starting to get the real picture of how challenging my job will get with time. I have seen the best and the worst parts of friendship. Have been in troubled waters and then come up trumps the next day. There have been fights with friends and there have been conditions imposed on friendships(which, I still can’t believe I accepted!). Have had my trust broken and have broken it myself. And, if all these things are not bizzare enough, I’ve been through four cities, i.e. Mysore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Pune during that period over issues that aren’t completely unrelated to those mentioned earlier. Anyways, let me get to the point straightaway instead of continuing with my gibberish phrases.
What I thought I've always been:I have taken great pride in believing that I’ve never been much of an emotional person. Not that I don’t care for family/friends, but there is always a practical angle to my thoughts/actions. I would like to believe that I never let me heart dominate my head in making decisions and that has kept me going all these years. When it comes to expressing emotions, I’ve always followed the mantra:
“I will never show, and you will never know!”
What I have actually been: And now comes the twist to it. I have hardly been the above mentioned person during this phase which ended recently. The misadventure is rooted in Mysore so let me handle the events chronologically. I used to be the first person to get out of office during the training days in Mysore but I have sat on my PC uselessly for hours and HOURS(most of the times till midnight, after which you’re kicked out of office, as it’s got to be locked by the security people), doing absolutely nothing! I have delayed my lunch and dinner purposelessly, I’ve lied left, right and centre, for anything and everything.I have flunked a paper for the FIRST TIME EVER in my life and that too, a paper which was supposedly “too easy”. I’ve gone to a re-test full of over confidence(and, given the fact that there was about 40% of the course which I had not even touched, the origin of the over confidence is still mysterious!).
For those who are not aware at all of the marking pattern during the Infosys Mysore training here’s a quick introduction to it, without understanding which you will not fully comprehend my stupidity! You have to write a 30 marks Hands-On(Practical) exam, followed by 70 marks of theory.The Hands-On is an open book exam and, as is the case in all the colleges the practical marks are supposed to help oneself “sail through” the paper, as you’ll hardly get below 25 out of 30 if you attempt all that is there to be attempted, in the right or wrong way. Well, at least this was what I felt about it until… well, read on.
So, as you might have guessed by now, I DID manage to comprehensively flunk the Hands-On exam, with a grand score of 13.75 out of 30! Infosys requires you to score 65/100 to pass a paper and there I was, looking down a tunnel with no light at the other end, requiring another 51.25 out of 70, i.e. 73%. However, given that in the Hands On exam there is open book system and, needless to say, there’s no such system in the theory paper, there were ominous signs for the things to come in the paper.To make matters worse just one night stood between me and the paper. The final result was assuring enough, as I scored 89% the next day but then, talking about crazy things, this much score from me can easily be counted as one of them!
Enter the partner in crime:The rest of the deeds also feature a partner named Ashish, who has played the lead role in most of our acts I’m going to mention here. Just a quick intro to my engineering college batchmate, Ashish. For a batch of 800+ people, its not easy to know everyone so there's no surprise that there were people in Manipal who didn't know Ashish, despite being from the same batch. However, I found out recently that almost everyone knows him as "the guy who used to abuse Bansal on basketball court during cricket matches!" Now let the story continue.I have got in arguments with auto drivers, trying to defend Ashish(who, in turn, was on the wrong side of the argument so in this case, “defend” implies talking endlessly and disappearing from the scene asap). Following Ashish’s lead, I’ve ridden bicycles on the footpaths in the Infosys Mysore campus without being whistled at by the security guards(and mind you, its no mean feat, given that there are at least 3000 security guards monitoring the campus at any given time!) and parked them at the exact places where they’re not intended to be parked. Walking casually through the corridors of our hostels in Mysore, Ashish would all of a sudden ring someone’s bell and then we were left with no option but to get out of sight. And then, how can I forget Ashish’s favourite game, i.e. getting into the life on the ground floor and then pressing 1,2,3,4,5 buttons just as the lift passed each of the floors, without causing the lift to stop on that particular floor!Another popular lift-game was to rush into the lift and take it up, when we knew that there’s some poor soul a few metres behind us who’s also headed for the same lift and hence, causing him discomfort, which was our idea of happiness! Just to add to the list, I once bought a whistle used by the security guards and tried to confuse the people in the campus by blowing it off everywhere and trust me, someone like Ashish too stopped me from doing it as he found it “embarrassing”!!!
And to add icing on the cake, I recently went to a salon and stole a comb, which, in turn, I lost!
So, there have been enough acts of stupidity and now there’s neither time nor the company to continue with them. I cannot thank The Almighty enough for not getting me posted to Pune, something that I was willing to kill for two months ago!Getting posted to Hyderabad seems to have released the previous, more stable, sane version of myself, who is quiet most of the time, sincerely goes about his job and has a thousand thoughts going through his mind all the time, jostling for attention. The past week has given me the chance to get my head down and think about the direction I am headed/want to be headed to. Getting paid for sitting idle in the company a.c. for the months of March and April seemed to be a dream come true but now the realization has sunk in as to how much time has been lost in that. All of a sudden, ambitions which were buried deep inside have erupted and suddenly I want to do a lot of things and, for a change I am willing to put in the effort as well. Felt good to find a few readers for my blog and recently I was over the moon when I took my first step towards becoming a published author. 24 hours in a day are no longer sufficient, being at home no longer means either watching t.v. or surfing the internet, the IPL games are no longer a must-watch and time spent on the internet is no longer synonymous to gtalk,orkut and facebook!
Office: The best part about office these days is that I do not have to keep looking at my watch repeatedly during office hours to kill time. Got to meet the top brass of my department yesterday and had a sneek peak into the kind of work I am expected to do in the future. Thanked The Almighty again, as I didn’t get posted to some testing unit. Got to know that we are into delivery and the kind of work that we’re going to do is purely developmental. The only thing I was concerned about when I got into the I.T. sector was ending up into support/testing job and now that has been taken care of. Thus, office no longer means having to stay in the campus for 9 hours 15 minutes before you go back, watch TV, chat and then doze off.I do have things to keep me engaged through the entire day.
There are times when I sit back and think about the time that sped by and then questions such as ,”Could I have done something differently?”, “What could have happened had I….?”, “Why did I have to ….”, etc mushroom up. There cannot be any clear cut answer to those and with time I have started to stop losing sleep over it. Being a spontaneous, impulse driven person, self-examination has never been my forte but this time it has yielded a positive result, for a change. It tells me that once again I’m lying at a highway where there are only two possibilities. The first one is to go back to where I came from and get stuck in the same circle I had so desperately wanted to get out of. The second, and more realistic one is to look ahead, pick up the pieces, gather myself, dust myself down and carry on into a little known territory, carrying with me nobody’s support but HOPE. The last week has made me realize that the possibilities that lie ahead of me over the next 18 months are immense and even though it’s a long shot now, I am up for it in a BIG WAY! After all,
“Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.”