SRK’s Blog

It is an excellent batting pitch if the opposition bowls without any intelligence, which is what they are doing now.

Bill Lawry, on England’s bowling in MCG yesterday !

Asked whether he’d give an honest opinion on Sehwag as he’d done with Ganguly in Zimbabwe…

“I don’t intend to do my coaching through the media”

Snappy, Candid and cool, isn’t it?

[ Mood: Embarrased ]
[ Currently: Working ]
We (myself and Prakasan) lost our carrom match today against Kotha and P.S.Vijay.

It was the first match for us. We had a Bye to the second round - Kotha and PSV had won their first round against Gibu and Charles Adaikalam.

This was played under best of 3 boards format.

The first board was very close - Kotha team took 1 point. I made a few blunders in that game, which made it tough for my partner.

Second board was also very close. We had 1 white, 1 black and 1 red at the end. I played miserably throughout the game. Ironically, it finished with my partner making a mistake - he put the opponent’s coin into the packet - red carried 3 points, so they got 4 points from the board !

So, Kotha and PSV were leading 5-0 with one board remaining. We had to take 6 points to win, even 5 wasn’t good enough (they had won more boards).

And it was a very closely fought battle…

I was disgusted at myself the way I played till now…

Kotha took the strike and put 2 coins. We(all 4 of us) played a few ’safe’ moves. Then, on my turn, I put 6-7 coins including red, and they had 7 coins on board to our 3. And we only needed 3 of their coins in the board to win. Kotha (I think) put 1 coin and Prakasan put 2 more in his next strike. It became 1 coin of ours to 6 coins of theirs. We were looking comfortable at that time, with 4 of their coins in bases.

Then, PSV played remarkably well to put 3 (somewhat difficult) coins, and it became a game of chess - whoever puts the first coin wins. The next 7-8 turns were spent in basing and unbasing our coin.

Then, I made the biggest blunder of the game - I missed an easy shot I missed. That must have given lot of confidence to my opponents - Kotha put a seemingly impossible pocket (with lot of courage, and some luck…).

That sealed our fate - I put the coin in the next chance - we finished with 5 points in the board, and the overall score was 5-5, Kotha and PSV were victorious since they won more number of boards.

It was one heck of a close match, which we lost (fully because of my inability to put crucial shots), and I real feel for my partner because he is too good a player - I consider him one of the top 2-3 in AdventNet, and we lost squarely because of me :-

As with any other sport, the team that held their nerve won. They did, and deserved the victory - congrats.

Personally, it has been a long, long time since I played this badly, in any game. Hey, I have played worse, much worse, by the way I will tell about that later !!

Even though I fought hard in the last board, I was nervous from the start, and it was a totally uncharacteristic performance from me…

It was indeed a good lesson for me - like one person said in Jayamailini’s blog - “Modhara kaiyyala kuttu”, and I deserved it !!

BTW, the carrom tournament this year is really exciting, with many teams playing well - it should be really interesting and exciting to see how it goes from here - more close games/upsets etc !

Cheers

SRK

P.S : I will be back next year, to stake my claim