After two weekends of washed out cricket, we finally made it out to quite
a beautiful day. Princeton were at VCP early, so we were able to start as
soon as the van arrived with the matting. We won the toss and I decided to see
how we fared with the bat. Atul and James opened. The pitch was expected
to be variable in bounce, though it became much more consistent as the sun
baked it through the day. Atul was bowled in the first over, not quite
knowing how it happened, as the ball seemed to flick bat or pad on the way
through. Ben joined James and was gone soon as well. At this point, Yair
was sent in, and though our scoring rate was very slow, the two posted a
stabilizing partnership. By the time Yair was dismissed, we had a
reasonable base from which to paunch our innings again. And launch is
just what next man in, Jay, did. He proceeded to take the attack to the
Princeton bowlers. Given that he decided to take the aerial route, there were chances, but
Princeton showed off some early season rust by dropping all chances that
Jay gave. Jay took full advantage of these chances, and with James was able to
bring our scoring rate back to just over four. Ashok then partnered with
James, who was the rock of our innings, and he too took to the Princeton
bowlers, taking advantage of the short leg-side boundary and pulling a
couple of sixes. Deepak and Vishwas ran well between the wickets at the
end to give us a nice flurry of runs to take us to 177 all out in the end. The
only disappointment was in not having James able to complete his 50 in his
first innings for Columbia, but from the way that he batted, I'm sure that
we'll see him reach that landmark in his next couple of innings.

177 was an ample total to defend, however, our bowling was quite to show
off the rust from a long winter. I opened with Imran and both of us had pretty
torrid first overs, struggling with both line and length. Imran settled
down though, so that he was rewarded with a wicket from the first ball of his
second over, with the only catch in the match. IN my next over I took a
wicket with a delivery that I felt embarrassed claiming a wicket with- a
waist high full toss on leg stump, which the batsman moved inside of, in
an attempt to flick it fine, and he missed the ball, which pulled his leg
stump right from the ground. However, given the mood of the Princeton early
order bats, who were all quite aggressive, I took myself out of the attack and
brought in Ashok, who was right on target from ball number one, bowling
stump to stump and getting some away movement. He frustrated the batsman
very quickly and had two wickets before we knew it. Warren was brought on
to replace Imran and he removed Princeton's skipper with his very first ball,
and at that stage, we had them at 70 for 5 in 10 overs. Karthik was the
new bastman and we knew that he was going to be the man who stood between us
and victory. He batted very intelligently though, hitting the ball hard, but
only when given the width or shortness of length to do so. Our bowling at
this point was not bad, but certainly not penetrative, and our winter rust
insured that there were always going to be 1-2 loose balls an over. After
the drinks break, I tried a double change, removing Warren and Jay,
bringing on Vishwas and myself. My second spell was better, as I took their sixth
wicket, but Karthik remained undeterred, and while Vishwas was struggling
with his direction, I was not able to induce a false stroke from Karthik.
Their scoring rate had always been healthy enough so that they were able
to take easy singles, while continuing to punish the loose stuff.

In the end, Karthik ended up seeing his team, through with relative ease.
A reasonable batting and fielding performance by us, just some match
practice needed for our bowlers.

Columbia innings:
Atul bowled Karthik 0 (4)
James lbw Shiva 42 (58)
Ben lbw Shoban 0 (3)
Yair lbw Nadeem 5 (31)
Jay bowled Venkat 35 (34)
Ashok b Nadeem 36 (22)
Imran run out 0 (5)
Deepak run out 12 (18)
Vishwas run out 16 (14)
Warren run out 2 (3)
Asad not out 0 (2)
extras (b5, lb6, w18) 29
Total in 34.3 overs 177 all out

Karthik 5 1 13 1
Shoban 3 0 11 1
Venkat 5 0 24 1
Nadeem 7 0 27 2
Sunil 6 0 34 0
Shiva 6.3 0 34 1
Fayaz 2 0 14 0

Princeton innings:
Kunal b. Ashok 31
Sunil c. Asad b. Imran 15
Raj b. Asad 0
Fayaz b. Ashok 4
Ajay lbw Warren 10
Karthik not out 61
Gaurang b. Asad 19
Nadeem not out 2

Asad 6 0 44 2
Imran 5 1 25 1
Ashok 5 0 30 2
Warren 4 0 19 1
Jay 2 0 10 0
Vishwas 4 0 34 0
James 0.4 0 8 0

Princeton win by 4 wickets