Midwest, Game 5

Game against Kentucky Cricket Club(KCC). It was a day filled with twists and turns and we deservedly lost the game. Not many teams get away after dropping an opening batsman, who ends up being 78 not out in a 35 over game, five times! We did not either. It was the most pathetic catching display by UC ever, in my memory. There was another catch dropped of the number 10 batsman in the penultimate over taking the tally to 6 dropped catches!
Batting first, we scored exactly 200 in the allotted 35 overs. Our number 4 batsman who was unbeaten on 39 was ridiculously asked to retire hurt by our captain, since he had a batsman capable of hitting better than him or so he thought, since the batsman who replaced him got out for 6. There were some blown-up egos DURING the game which made the captain not ask the retired batsman to pad up again! Infact, no one was padded up when the last 2 balls of our innings were bowled! Had a wicket fallen then, it would have been utter shame. The captain was completely out of sorts...and i was not surprised.
They started the chase in a good fashion scoring 35 in the first 6 overs losing an opener. Their second wicket partnership was worth about 100 runs and that kind of sealed the match before we started dropping every single catch that came our way. Luckily, none of them came my way! I had a good outing personally bowling 7 overs for 27 runs and picking a wicket. One of our new ball bowlers also bowled very very well finishing with a 5-for. Unfortunately, both of our spells were over with 6 more overs to go and KCC needing 47 more runs with 3 wickets in hand! I still cannot believe we lost the game from there. Our captain gave away 11 runs in the 30th over making it 36 from 5 overs. Then the other new ball bowler, J, gave 8 in the 31st making it 28 from 4 overs. In my and many others' humble opinion, the captain should have taken himself out of the attack. But he came back for the 32nd over and gave 10 runs making it a run-a-ball contest. Meanwhile, we ran a batsman out leaving them with just 2 wickets. 7 runs were scored off the 33rd over bowled by J making the equation 11 from 12. The captain bowled himself again! 6 runs were scored off the over and another tailender's wicket fell, the opening batsman going along nicely, courtesy our catching, at the other end. The number 11 was on strike and the first ball of the last over was whacked into the "unprotected" midwicket fence for four! Despite advice from me and a few others, the captain decided to keep that zone open, because the bowler, with all due respect for his talent, who has no brains, did not want a fielder there! It was an unpardonable error and we paid dearly for it. The bowler did a great job to follow it up with 4 dot balls, making the equation 1 from 1, with the opener standing helpless at the non-striker's end. Another error in field placement made them take an easy single. The square leg fielder was not in a single saving position and surprisingly it missed the captain's attention or he did not bother! They won off the last ball of the game. What should have been a 50 run victory or so, ended up being this way.
We had a team meeting after the game and a lot of holes in the team were discussed, the major one being the captain's potential as a player and more so, as a captain. The unethical issue of retiring the batsman was condemned by most of us. It was a very very long day yesterday and i slept for 10 full hours after the game.
We have two more games to go(both are away games) and winning both of them should ensure a place in the knockers. Losing one "might" be fine if we start working out the permutations and combinations...but at this point, we'd only like to think about winning both the games, the next one in particular. I'll post a link to the scorecard in a few days.

EDIT(17th july, 6:30pm):::::: scorecard's here