Curtain Raiser

Passion about cricket keeps us together for ever.
A game of cricket was giving us more relaxation than 6 hours of sleep. Be it before the exams, after the exams, before the campus interviews.. any time Cricket had the highest precedence.

Gone are days when we had time to play cricket every day. As we all graduated from our collage and became so called professionals we had less time to play. We all joined different companies and were put in different locations. We had different priorities in life. It some what seemed that we are not going to come together for the passionate game in earth cricket. Also one of the reason being the scarcity of the play ground in the booming bangalore.

But we realized that its nothing other than a game of cricket which is going to rejuvenate us.
We came up with the idea of playing cricket in the weekend. To coordinate it was not difficult because most of us were staying in the same place "Mandara" the place where the idea was originated and kicked off.. This was way back in 2001. Me, Kengu, PJ, Basha, Dumma,Majid(fast bowler with shoaib akthar action that time )Boon(now working in Udaipur), Bat (In Cannad now), Kaburi and his brother santosha and prafulla. We had the participation from the Shindli Boys.. Ravi, Kirana to kick off the event in the Arekera Ovals. To kickoff the event we started playing on Sundays. This soon became a super hit and all the other NIE E&C gang joined us along with the sagar jatre's..

This mechanism was working perfectly till early 2003. Every one looking forward for the game on Sunday morning.. Things changed. When i got married :-). I had to move out of Mandara.
Soon PJ moved out, Kengu had left to Chennai on his quest for the job.. Bat had also moved to IISC. Dileep and Boon were the last ones to move out of Mandara. So gradually the weekend cricket started to loose the intrest after june2003.

I was thinking if this is going to be the end of cricket?
We all had come to a different part of the city. Every one had shifted towards the Banashankari and the quest for the new play ground continued. Also it seemed the enthu level had come down.

We did make some unsuccessful attempt to get the game going with the National college grounds as the venue. But too much of people in the grounds and other things did not get the idea moving.

It was finally in April05 we found a new place.. The beautiful grounds in the Bangalore university campus. The beautiful location with out any disturbance on saturdays inspired all of us .. Initially there was some resistance from people for the distance. Gradually the lovely game inspired every one to be present on saturday mornings. Kengu had come back to bangalore for greener pastures in CISCO and was staying with dileepa in Vidayaranyapura. Kengu and dumma dileep were coming to play from that far place along with occasionally lodde. It kicked off soon.

Soon Others to join were Adi, Karthik MK, Santosh, Pada and his brother, Pavan and his Bhava.. so the list grew..

Saturday cricket also became the place where we could meet our old friends, old juniors etc.
Like Sanjay and me were neighbors long back in shims. It was years since we met but saturday cricket again made us to get intouch.

Since one year the group is become so big that we have more than 30 people in the email group weekendcricketers. Every friday or thursday the rollcall starts and then saturday we all meet at the grounds.

Cricket is the game of controversies. Even we will have a lot of arguments on the field.. like boundary dispute, No Ball fielding ... but the best thing is we all forget these things at the ground and are still a group of good friends off the field. We finish our saturdays cricket with a couple of tender coconut's in the gate of the Bangalore University looking forward for the next saturday morning..!