We all have seen Cheerleaders, but may not be this close. The mega event was the Royal Premier League Cricket tournament held at my native place. On the final day, they had this arrangement that was definitely surprising for us as well as the crowd. You can see there were lot of viewers from the village to watch the final match, and certainly they spent a lot this time.
It was all because of a nice sponsorship they got from Royal Lion. And they wanted us to play a friendly match in the morning, with that hard cork ball. You must have seen posts earlier from me on cricket, but we always played with Tennis ball. Playing with the hard cork ball is risky and most of us played with a hard ball almost three decades back. However, we finally agreed and formed a veteran team to fight with the youngsters.
The finals were to start at 1 pm, so we played a 10 over match in which the Juniors bat first and set a target of 99 for us. Certainly bowling with the cork ball was not easy, and more ever fielding was most challenging. In the attempt to hold a catch, I even hurt my left hand. Even though the spirit is there, the body does not move that first. And also holding a catch needs good practice, which we lacked. Still it was a lovely memorable experience.
They provided all the kits to us, good that I had some personalized stuff (like guard) at my native place, as I play cricket only there.
This bat is always like in the backwards of my car, and I had to go for batting in higher order because of some early wicket collapse in our team. Luckily we both played till the end and I finished the match with the winning four. I never thought, I would be able to connect the ball with bat so well. That too with the cork ball, which comes faster. But it happened, I was able to score a little over quarter century and our partnership scored more than 60 runs.
And getting a prize for performing in such an event was way beyond my imagination, they handed us Rs 500/ cash along with a cup for the performance. I came to know that they were giving a smart watch in every match, for the Man of the match award - that's not a small amount, certainly they got a big sponsorship. After our match was over, the finals started and we stayed the entire day there, because there was provision of lunch as well.
Reminded me our time when we used to hold such tournaments, by collecting money from every house in the village. There would be few hard workers who would do most of the task but overall its a team effort.
The DJ guy is sitting inside and play it only when there is four or six or a wicket and then the cheerleaders swung into action.
The prize distribution continued till late evening and the entire day was full of fun. Certainly, people in villages enjoy these live events and socialization, which is much better than the digital world we live in. That's the reason, I always go there, when ever I get opportunity. It serves two purposes, first spending some time with parents and then all these fun. It's complete different feelings, which can only be experienced and not expressed in words.
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