Washout saga continues

When I arrived this Friday in Chennai, in the back of my mind, I had the two washouts that I had. When I saw pools of water on the road and streets, it made me worry a bit. With two games lined up in the next two days, I was very sure that I would definitely have one game to umpire. Never I imagined that I will have two more washouts and that too on consecutive days.

The game was supposed to take place in CLRI grounds. As per the original plan, I was supposed to umpire at CPT-IP grounds, but since the ground was not available today, I was posted in CLRI. I did not think much about the ground, I was more interested in getting a game. But I knew the ground, so I could anticipate what to expect. This ground has already served as two first in my TNCA league career. This was the ground where I had my first game with TNCA as an umpire. This was also the ground where I had my first washout :). So I knew very well that if it rains then it will be difficult to conduct the game.

Yesterday, though I had to call off my game because it was cloudy and the situation would not have improved, but it did not rain the whole day. Even when I went to sleep around mid night yesterday, it did not rain. I cannot express my happiness that I felt when I went to sleep, here in writing. I went to sleep hoping that it would not rain.

When I woke up today, I did not see any signs of rain. But when I saw outside my house, it was all wet and I knew that it had rained sometime in the night but was not sure how much and for how long. So before going for my bath, I went to get the news paper for the day. I purchased the news paper and saw that the plan for the day was intact. So I came back and got ready for the game. But I knew for sure that it will definitely be a delayed start.

May be because I had this delayed start at the back of my mind, somehow I started a bit late from my house for the ground. This was definitely wrong my part. Irrespective of the situation, I had to be in the ground at least 45 minutes before the start of the game, which meant that I had to be there at 8:45 AM but I reached the ground only at 9:05 AM. I cursed myself for being late. When I reached the ground, I saw pools of water and my heart sulked. But the positive part was that the sun was shining.

I went and met my colleague of the day, C.P. Sridhar. He has played lot of professional cricket. He has been umpiring from 1989. He has wealth of experience as both player and an umpire. I checked with him if there was a possibility of a game. He said, we will take a call after our first inspection at 09:30 AM.

We did our first inspection at 09:30 AM. The pitched looked fine. With the way he sun was shining, we never had any doubt about pitch posing any problem, as it did the other day for me in CPT-IP ground. We saw that the bowler's run up at one end had a big pool of water. In the same end towards the boundary, there was a sizable area covered with water. This part of the ground did not have any grass. So we knew that if sun was out, then this part would definitely dry. We observed that near this part there was a big patch that was covered with grass and filled with water. The grass would not allow the water to be soaked. So we knew for sure that there was no way the play would start in another hour. While returning back to the pavilion, we observed on one of sides of the pitch around the 30 yard circle, there was again a big part of the ground that had grass and was filled with water. Anyone looking at these parts from a distance would never realize that these pockets of ground were water logged. Players were eagerly waiting for our verdict. They expected a cancellation. To their disappointment, we told them that we will take that call at 11:30 AM, the time for our next inspection.

We had only one person who was responsible for the maintenance of the ground. If we had pushed the water outside and spread it on nearby areas, we had a fair chance that this place would get dry. But then with just one person for maintaining the ground, it was too much for us to ask. So we did not have the man power to get the ground ready. We had to rely solely on the natural way (i.e. getting dry from sun shine). Now, these are very tricky decisions. We knew deep in the heart, even if the sun shines brightly, the water in the pockets where we had grass was not going to get dry. But we cannot decide upfront as sun was still shining. If it was cloudy, we could have taken a call to cancel the game around 10:30 AM itself, as we did in case of my first washout, in the same ground. But the sun made all the difference. Not that I was unhappy about the situation. I wanted to have a game and was ready to explore every possibility of having a game. In this case, that is why we decided that we will give sun some time to influence the ground situation and thus decided for an inspection after 2 hours.

Now we had to kill the time somehow. I suggested for a coffee break, to which my colleague readily agreed. We went to Hot Chips in front of the ground on the other side of the road. Since I did not have any thing in the breakfast, I decided to use this opportunity. I ate pongal and had a cup of hot coffee. My colleague had a cup of Tea. He had plenty to speak. One good thing about these unscheduled breaks are, we get to know about the colleague or some players a lot. Most of the times, when these people have been in the system for a long time, they will have several interesting anecdotes and they share them happily as well. So I heard lot of stories.

We came back to the ground in an hour or so. We still had one more hour before our next inspection. Again the chit chat and stories continued. In the meantime, quiet a few players approached us to check what were we up to. Will we call off the game or wait till 01:45 PM? So, several questions, several remarks. Several suggestions, but we have to be unbiased, unperturbed by the remarks that we receive, not getting influenced, we have take our decisions based on what we see and what we feel. The sun was getting brighter every minute. So that was making it more difficult for to decide. It meant that the waiting period will increase.

We went for our next inspection at 11:30 AM. The water had dried a bit on places where there was no grass. But places where we had grass, we could not see enough improvement. Also at bowler's run up area, we still had water but lesser than that we saw at 09:30 AM. We decided that we will have one more inspection at 12:30 PM. Players were not happy. But as I said, we had to go by our judgement. Since Sun was out, we had to see every possibilty, before calling the game off. We went for our next inspection at 12:30 PM. There was no significant improvement. We had to decide now finally. If we had to start the game today, then it has to be done latest by 1:45 PM and for that we have to take a call now. Because we need to give the groundsman also some time to prepare the pitch, do the markings, etc. So we decided based on the current conditions that it will not improve by 1:45 PM which is the cut off time for the game to start. So we finally called off the game.

You must be thinking, all this story just to say that the game was called off. What else to do? You cannot blog with just one or two lines, isn't it? :)

I do not have any game next week. I have office work the next weekend, so I cannot go to Chennai. May be I will do a game in the first weekend of October (of course if rain permits :)). Till then happy waiting :). In the meantime I will try to update the post on my second game.

YAWO

YAWO - Yet Another Washout :(

It was another washout today. Out of the 5 games I was posted this season, this is the third game that has been washed out by rain. After my return from Belgium, I have always been saying that only my cricket life is on track. Now, even that seems to be going off the track :). I know this is too early for me to say this. But it is really frustrating.

This time I had planned two games this weekend. Thus I arrived in Chennai on Friday (yesterday) itself. When I reached Chennai, I saw pools of water on streets and road. I was very worried to see that. I just hoped that it does not rain. Yesterday, the whole day it did not rain. I was relieved that I will have a match this weekend. The whole day it did not rain.

Finally my hope was shattered. At 9:30 PM, it began to rain. I was returning from my friend's place and caught in the middle of my journey. Luckily, there was a flyover on my way home, so I had a shelter to prevent myself from getting wet. I was lucky in this respect but my luck for the game the next day was definitely not going my way. I stayed under the flyover for more than an hour and throughout this period, it was raining cats and dogs. I saw the water on road flowing into the drainage on the side of the road. Along with it, I saw my game on Saturday as well going down the drain. The rain stopped for a while but it drizzled for some time during my journey and I made the best of this opportunity and reached home without getting much wet. But as soon as I reached home, it started to rain again. With every moment the possibility of having a game the next day was getting dark. Rain was not in my control, so I decided to do something that was in my control. Thus I went to sleep hoping that the rain would stop and I would have a game to umpire.

The next day i.e. today when I woke up, it was not raining. That itself was a relief. But I was not sure if the ground would be ready. Again whatever had to happen had already happened. I got ready but before starting, I thought it was a good idea to check if there would be a game. I called the TNCA person who is responsible for posting (Mr Ramji). Ramji sir was also not sure, he asked me to check in the news paper. I checked in the news paper and the news paper did not mention anything about the cancellation. So it meant that I had to go to the ground. But having seen the rain the last night, I was not very hopeful for a game to happen.

Today's game was supposed to be played between Nelson CC and St. Mary's CC, a division 5 game. The venue for the game was CPT-IP matting ground. I had never been there, so I was not familiar with the ground. So I could not anticipate the condition beforehand. As I had no other choice, I started for the game.

With some difficulty in finding the ground, I reached the ground at 09:00 AM. The outfield was fairly even and looked dry. But there were pockets of outfield where there was no water but it was very slippery and could definitely be considered dangerous. Then I went near the pitch, the pitch at the ends was very wet. The run up was also wet and soft. So it was very clear that the match could not start at scheduled time of 09:30 AM. Then I went and met my colleague for the day, P. Raju, who had already come. I had not umpired with him but I was with him during the BCCI Level 1 course (I will tell you more about this in one of my post in future). He has been playing profession cricket for a long time. He stopped playing only last year. He had started umpiring in 1997 itself. Though he was of the same age as mine, his exposure to cricket was much more than what I had. Then we went together for our first inspection. We decided that we will not start the game at the scheduled time. We informed the captains about this and told them that our next inspection would be at 10:00 AM.

To pass our time, we went to a tea shop near by. We had a cup of tea. Then returned back to the ground around 09:45 AM. It was still cloudy with very little sign of sun shine. So there was no scope for the conditions to improve. We went for another inspection at 10:00 AM. We concluded that the situation did not improve. It was still wet at bowler's run up and the pitch was still wet. We decided that we will do the next inspection at 11:00 AM. But we were skeptical about any improvement in the conditions.

Around 10:30, the sun started shining, but it was not with any great intensity. Still, it gave some hope that the we will have a game. So we patiently waited till 11:00 AM. We had decided among ourself that we will take a stock of the situation and if we found that the conditions have not improved, then we will call the game off and not wait till 1:45 PM which was the official time to call the game off. We went to the pitch and found that the situation was no different from what we saw at 10:00 AM. We were pretty convinced that even if the sun came out, the pitch was not going to get dry enough for a game to happen. The bowler's run up was still damp. So with a heavy heart, I had to call another game off. So we recorded our observations on the score sheet and called the game off.

Rain had again played a spoil sport. My plan of umpiring two games this weekend did not happen. While leaving the ground, I just hoped that my other game this weekend did get affected by rain.

To know what happened with my next game, keep reading...

Another game, at last

Out of the three games that I agreed, two were washed out by rain. This weekend (Sep 4), I had a game and at last, I was able to umpire. It was bright sunny day to begin with and there was no change in that state throughout the day. So finally after two washouts, I had a complete game.

This was game between Egmore RC and Perambur Club, a division 3 game. My colleague for the game was K. Kuberan. He is from year 2000 batch. He is also a cricket coach. He was coaching a division 1 team for 4 years. Both of us had reached the ground around 8:40 am. That gave us few time to catch up with each other.

It was the same ground where I did my firt game of the season. The ground was familiar. This time while choosing my end I chose the end opposite to the end that I chose last time. Again there is a lot of science as well involved in selecting ends, but I think if I start discussing that, it will be a complete post in itself. So I skip that for now.

At 9:01 AM, I went for the toss with the captains. This was the earlies time that I went for toss in any game. There is one more thing that I have to tell. It is rarely in my past games that both the umpires went together for toss in my games. Whenever only one umpire went, it had always been me who went for the toss. The law has changed in this regard now. Earlier it was not mandatory for the umpires to attend the toss. But now it is mandatory for one umpire to be present. Now do not ask me, why on TV, we do not see the umpires coming for toss. That is because, the tournament generally follows playing conditions, where match refree accompanies the captains for the toss.

Egmore RC won the toss and elected to bat first. Since the toss was done pretty early, everyone had plenty of time before the scheduled start. The game started on time. The bowling bagn from my colleague's end. The first ball was a wide. The very next ball, the batsman missed the ball, it hit his pad and there was a huge appeal and he was given out. So Egmore were 1/1 in 1 ball, not start that they would have hoped for. The first two overs were full of extras, as far as I remember only one run was scored of bat. To add to these extras, the bails were falling because of the wind at my colleague's end. Extras and this delay mean that it took 15 minutes to complete the 2 overs.

With the contributions from the bowler and with some good stroke making, the Egmore reached 45 at the end of 5 overs. This was enough a motivation for the captain of Perambur to make a bowling change. And the change brought immediate result. The very first ball, not the best ball, wide outside the off, pulled by the batsman, went high in the air to fine leg and the fielder made no mistake resulting in another wicket.

Will update the details of the game in few days...Happy waiting!