Coming on the back of a bowling performance that wouldnt impress the Selection Committee of even the Zaire Cricket Association, Punjab-Da-Puttar, Raj Malhotra (seen alongside, facing his bowling coach - The Bowling Machine) redeemed himself with a superlative all-round performance that saw him pick up 5 wickets ( much to the astonishment of the spectators that at any given time included such students of the game as a groundsman, a couple of College peons, a watchman and a few stray dogs) and play a match winning innings of 42, complete with scorching cover drives and ferocious pulls. Raj's superb all round performance saw Foobar A defeat Foobar B by a comprehensive margin of 8 wickets in a highly inconsequential match of great interest to the jobless, played at the Government Polytechnic Grounds.
Batting first Foobar B, started off very well with Ram and Shyam stepping on the gas early on. The opening partnership saw Foobar to the other side of 50 before Raj got his first victim of the day - Ram. Shyam who by now had begun to miss Ram at the wicket was reunited with him in the pavillion thanks to some good bowling by none other than Raj. Wickets fell in quick succession as soon as Shanti Main Kranti was brought on to bowl in the 11th over, an over that turned out to be quite an eventful over. Prem Khurana was to be the first of SMK's victims, caught off a mistimed square cut at point by Samba. The ball was short and wide and asking to be hit and Prem Khurana let go a full blooded square cut only to find the ball bounce off Samba's forearms onto his biceps. The ball then rolled back onto his forearms before falling on his chest and finally resting between his chest and his hands, which had for the first time in the day moved in concert with each other. In came Madhavan and a scintillating single later he too was caught at point by by-now-you-know-who. The script much the same as Prem Khurana's dismissal - a square cut and again an astonishing catch at point, this time inches from the ground. Fattu Tattoo and Munna provided some much needed acceleration towards the end. Their game plan seemed simple - Run the first run hard and then run every subsequent run even harder, as if your life depended on it. Once Fattu's wicket fell, Munna was tricked into believing that it was the last over ( when there were a couple more left) by our local smiling ass-ass-in, Pappu Kangi, which led him to lose his wicket trying to execute an audacious reverse sweep of the accurate bowling of Raj Malhotra. A couple of wickets later, the Foobar B innings came to an end with Raj Malhotra bagging 5 prized wickets and Samba having taken three catches out of the four that came his way. At the end of it all, Foobar B had managed to post a sizeable 115 in 19.5 overs.
The Foobar A innings was opened by an enthusiastic KD ( whose entusiasm vanished as soon as it had shown up when he faced the first ball by our local version of The Rawalpindi Express) and yours truly. However, Foobar A chased well and suffered only a couple of hiccups along the way, as they chased down the Foobar B score in just about 18 overs with 8 wickets in hand. Post match the Foobar A players were seen running a victory lap cheered on by the above mentioned groundsman, college peons, watchman and a few stray dogs ( one of who, we learnt is named GeorgeW ). Our local expert-on-all-issues, Investment Banker, Nitesh Naidu was fortunately unavailaible for comment.
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