Oceans XI : Off to a whimper!

The Oceans XI cricket team opened its 2020 cricket season with a game today against the Penang combined schools. Now, no disrespect to the schoolboys, but several seasons ago, such a fixture would be celebrated by the oceans boys as a win even before stepping out into the field.

The Oceans team comprising of former national and state cricketers surprisingly fell in this opening game with the schoolboys easily catching the 110 odd runs that the blokes put up. It doesn't augur well for the Ocean's team that we were poor in all departments of the game - batting, bowling and fielding.

We went in to bat and very quickly, started chasing the game. Our top 4 batsmen all fell cheaply and was it not for the heroics of Deva, we would have fell far short of the century mark.

When it was our turn to bowl and field, it was pretty much the same story. Our bowling attack lacked any bite and the schoolboys pretty much had the game sewn up when they lost their first wicket in th 13th over. This toothless attack was compounded further by slack fielding with our veteran, Kilat Rama, being the biggest culprit for spilling a sitter. I hear the vaseline that he put on his fingers the night before had yet to wear off. For his sake, I am hoping that he had more success with the use of his fingers the previous night.

The biggest letdown however, was that there was no fine session after the game. Going against Ocean's tradition, we decided to forego the fine session. Have we lost our character, guys? Win or lose, we have always had fun and the camaraderie amongst ourselves was always bigger than the game itself. Fine sessions were there for us to laugh off our follies and at the same time collect a small amount of dough for this self financed team.

On the bright side, we can only improve and hopefully as the rust wears off, we start to show our Ocean's colors in matches to come, especially if the boys get off their asses and get some practice in. One thing for sure, be sure to fine the fine master in the next game - that's now you Mr Flaming Wei! Dont say I didn't pass on the role!