Milestones

Instead of doing the usual match analysis, I thought of covering some milestones which 

our players are approaching. Probably we all can celebrate it on the field with our famous wide chant when they achieve it. 

Puneet - This Captain of ours (called Captain Charisma by few ;) ) crossed 400 Cricbay 

career runs in the game against Cougars! Congrats captain, way to go.

Milestones:

1. He needs 12 more runs to reach the 100 run mark this season.

Akshay - Mr VC,  is definitely one of the well behaved player on the field. I have never seen 

him loose his temper on field, always calm and collected. 

He has in fact, crossed quite a few milestones in past few games. 

Milestones:

1. Crossed 50 Cricbay career runs in game against Daredevils.

2. Game against Cougars was his silver jubilee game for Blitz. 

3. Already achieved 25 fielding dismissals!

Kudos VC, way to go!

Kasat- I don't know whether to call him Right arm leg-break/off-break or medium pace, I think it is fair to address him as 'Right Arm Unplayable'  ;)

Milestones:

1. Needs 4 more wickets to achieve 25 Cricbay Career Wickets & 15 wickets this season.

Avinash - Hit Avi-Lee for a good shot and don't expect the next ball to be any lower than your 

face ;). I guess we are missing those beamers and especially what I call the 'Avi-Roar'. Get 

well soon dude and start roaring.

Milestones:

1. Needs one wicket to claim 50 Cricbay career wickets.(Now who doesn't know that!!)

Aditya - Kickass allrounder! He is one intimidating bowler any batsman can face, especially 

when he bowls a beautiful ball to you, he will walk towards you like a bull and look at the ground where the ball had pitched! 

If i have to give him a nick it would definitely be 'Mean Killer'!

Milestones: 

1. Needs MOM in the game against GSCC to make it a Hatrick of MOMs.

2. Needs 20 more runs to achieve 50 runs this season.

Kartik - He claims his nickname to be Kaata, but personally i would like to call him Practice man ;). There are times when i reach home after a game, check my mails to already see a practice invite for next weekend from Practice Man :D

Milestones:

1. Needs 26 more runs to achieve 200 Cricbay Career runs

2. Needs 6 more wickets to claim 75 Cricbay Career wickets

Satish - Likes to be called Jonty & has lived up to it by some marvellous effort in the field apart from his Wall-like defense techniques and pre-meditated leaves ;). 

Milestones:

1.Needs 1 more run! to achieve 100 Cricbay Career runs

2. Needs 3 more runs to achieve 50 runs for this season (hoping to see him achieve both in 

the next game he plays)

Montu - I enjoy watching this swashbuckling batsman in full flow. Though most times i have 

to watch him from dug-out :(, i bet it is lot of fun to be on other end and watch him 

run-blazing.

Milestones:

1. Needs 15 more runs to achieve 200 Cricbay Career runs

2. Needs 6 more runs to achieve 50 runs for this season.

Arun - Now we all know and have talked about "Coach-Arun-Captain's"six hitting abilities. 

it is given that he can connect and clear fields at will .But what is interesting for me is 

his "Coach (read agony aunt)" role. I think i know a few players who were/are using his 

coaching services.(I think he will kill me for this ;) )

The list of players has been kept confidential for privacy reasons :D

Milestones:

1. Needs 2 more wickets to achieve 25 Cricbay Career Wickets

2. Need 32 runs to reach the 200 Cricbay Career runs mark.

Go Blitz!!

~j

The Monkeys are Blitzing now - Part 1 : The Birth of 'Beasts'

I will use our blog to describe our cricketing journey from the 'Beasts' in 2007 June to Blitz currently. I am writing this blog from my perspective. The facts I present might be off the mark, and I urge you to correct them. After all, memory is not perfect, and history is written by the winners. This is part 1 of the series.

It was June 2007. I had just landed in the bay area, and wasn't feeling too good about leaving all my friends in Ohio. After all, I had spent 5 winters in Ohio. In Ohio, you get to play cricket only for 3-4 months because of the weather, and I had heard my friends in the bay area boast about the weather here. I was looking forward to a weekend of casual cricket. I was sharing an apartment temporarily with Arul who was my grad school buddy, and asked him one saturday if anybody he knew played cricket. He made a few calls and we decided to leave for the ground in the afternoon. I used to play organized cricket in Cincinnati even thought it was only for 3-4 months, and we usually played with our corporate teams, which meant that the whole setup was very formal. We drove to this park, called Washington park, and I saw 5-6 guys playing cricket there. They were using the end of the baseball ground as the wickets and it was 3 times as wide as our regular stumps. I was first introduced to Arvind (who plays for Dazzlers), and then to our first fast bowler Shireesh Mettapalle. Apart from these 2, I also met the now famous Iris Gujju gang : Hardik, the huge guy, Rushabh, the tall dude, Siddharth the quiet chap, and Akshay the puny one :). There was also GG who was the butt of jokes in that gang. It was a good enough crowd for casual cricket and they went over the rules, and we started playing. Thats when I realized that these guys were all really good. Hardik was especially very agile, and that was something I did not expect. We had a good game of cricket with Kasat and Rushabh hitting the stumps on multiple occasions from various angles, and Hardik swatting every loose ball for a boundary. We met again for cricket a week later and I got to know the gang a little better. I found out that apart from being good cricketers, this was a really fun gang, mainly due to Hardik who always kept things light with some good natured ribbing directed towards GG. We decided to meet regularly on weekends to play cricket, and we played on both days on a few weekends.

Arvind came up with the idea of registering for a 6s tournament called the Bata cup, and he felt that we had a decent team to compete for that tournament. There were 7 of us - Arvind,Shireesh,Hardik,Rushabh,Kasat,Akshay and myself and we decided to use a rotation system to play the games(the birth of rotation!). Arvind registered our team name as 'Beasts', and Monkeys version zero was born. Shireesh was the captain of this team, and he was the first captain of the Monkeys! Kasat pulled out of the tournament due to issues at work, and we roped in Tarun who was here for his internship from USC (Thanks to USC for sending so many quality cricketers our way). Tarun was a hard hitter of the ball, and could clear any boundary. We were confident about a good show in the tournament. As we were unaware of the level of competition in the bay area, we thought we would advance easily. Our first game against FUN 6 was an easy victory with Shireesh taking a hattrick, and Akshay picking up 4 dismissals behind the stumps (this was the birth of our current keeper for blitz). We were elated then, only to walk back dejected 5 hours later, as we lost to the eventual champs, the spartans in the next game. Hardik and Tarun batted really well to get us out of an early mess, and Rushabh bowled his heart out, but in the end we were short. Apart from a minor mishap where Hardik wanted to pummel a particular dude wearing a blue tooth headset, we were reasonably satisfied as we were 1-1 at the end of the day.

This created an interest to play competitive cricket in the bay area. Sunnyvale cric group was formed. Our group grew from 6-7 on the weekends to 20-30 at one point. We got in friends, friends of friends and passersby to play with us. There was this dude, who used to play with us, also got us water bottles for one session, but nobody knew who he was. One fine saturday...

TO BE CONTINUED

Pre Match Analysis Vs Cougars

Last match between Blitz CC and Legends was expectedly won by Blitz as they claim the much deserved 3rd spot in the Group F rankings. 

Coming Sunday it is a different ball game, better opponents and platinum in sight, it surely promises to be an exciting weekend for cricket!

Match Details

Sunday, June 7th

Start time: 8:30 am

Ground: Monta Vista High School 

Current Form

Cupertino Cougars: W L L A W

Having won toss only once in their 7 games, it is fair to say their luck is running little low in that department. But little luck and lot of hardwork is surely helping Cougars in points accumulation this season.Cougars bat really deep and back themselves to chase any score posted by the opposition. Having chased scores around 75-80 with ease (more than once!) probably explains their choice to field first in their only Toss win. 

Win for Cougars might see them end up at either of 4th,5th or 6th position whereas a loss will definetely mean 6th position for them!

Blitz CC:  W W L W W

A win against Cougars this weekend will almost ascertain a place in Platinum for the Blitz.

Blitz would definitely want to seal the Platinum deal this weekend rather than leave it till very end!

A win for Blitz might see them grabbing either of 1st, 2nd or 3rd spot whereas a loss might even see them slip to 6th spot! 

Watch out for

Sridhar Rs: This middle order batsman is the highest run getter for cougars this season. He has scored 69 runs this season with an avg. of 13.8 which involves 3x6's. 

What makes Cougars a great batting team is the fact that in the games they have played so far, there is always a new batsman which rises to the occasion. He gets his highest score, takes them to victory and claims his MoM while rest of the batsmen like Sridhar Rs. play support role.

Head-to-Head record

These two teams have never met each other.

My 2 cents

Majority of the wins for Cougars have come against weaker teams,they have failed to beat better teams like ChampsXi and Skiers11.

Cougars have to still prove themselves to be a force to be reckoned with!

On the other end, Blitz is missing some key names from the squad, either due to unavailability or injury. It will be true test of the team's character and fighting spirit.

Go Blitz!!

~j

We are already in platinum

Guys,

Based on the 3 more games left for us and other teams and also including abandoned games we are 100% into the platinum league of 32 teams. We qualify as 4th place team at the worst from our group and 2nd place at the best.If I read the rules right then the next round is a fresh start with two wins expected from 3 games to progress to platinum cup knockouts. I think we should utilize the last 3 games to bat first and put pressure on opposition. At the moment, our batting is still bit jittery and we need to focus on it as well as our running between wickets before the big games ahead.What say you folks?

Kartik

Selecting Playing XI for a game

Guys,

I was reading articles about how other cricbay team's decide on forming their XI for the game. It looks like Performance-Participation-Commitment index should be a good model to follow with captain and VC rating these factors for the playing XI on a scale from 1 to 10. There are times when players don't perform well but they do participate and committed to the game/team which sometimes goes against their selection. Just curious what blitzz janta things about this.

Kartik

Blitz CC vs Legends Pics

Source: Sriram

Check out this link for more snaps:http://www.pbase.com/sriram_g77/blitz_vs_legends

Calling all Blitz Bloggers

Sorry for veering OT, but I found this to be an interesting piece to cover. I am immensely happy to see the growing interest in Blitz cricket this season, mainly due to our improved performance. There have been more discussions about team dynamics, talks about getting uniforms, people contributing to logo designs, and last but not least, the launch of this blog. We are committed to playing cricket on game day, and to practice a bit before the game to attain a confidence level with our teammates and with our own game. Blogging is a bonus. All our contributing bloggers have blogged because they wanted to express what they blogged, and have done so in a fine fashion. I believe there is a writer in all of us; eloquence is not a prerequisite, subject matter expertise is not a prerequisite; the only prerequisites are interest, and a topic under the sun. Its an open call to all the blitz bloggers. The blog need not be about cricket. It doesnt have to make the people who read it happy; there is no pressure to perform on a blog like on the cricket field . I would like to use our blog to call all the dormant bloggers - you want to be heard, here is a platform, and blitz is the audience. Make yourself heard.