The firsts are always special!
So, it had been less than a month for me having arrived in the US. During this first month, I have made so many friendships and had experienced so many things. Having relived those moments, the one thing that stood out for me was to build relationships through the love of Cricket.
Growing up back home, I had been an ardent cricket lover and a pretty good player myself. I have had pleasure of developing relationships with so many people because of the mutual love for the game of Cricket.
I wanted to continue my love of Cricket in the land of opportunities too.
The story of how I met my cricket buddies here in the US is actually interesting. I’ll keep it short OR I will try to keep it short.
So, I arrived at Hartford on August 12th and during the first week of my stay, I tried exploring the Downtown area and that’s when I came across Bushnell Park. I remember someone telling me that there was a park, but I didn’t imagine it would be this big in the middle of the downtown. When I saw it the first time, I immediately fell in love with it and could imagine myself hanging out in the lush greenery surrounded by chirping of the birds and quietude at the same time.
I started going to Bushnell Park every single day during the evening time to get some steps in. It was during one of these walks when I came across a few people marching with cricket gears in their hands. Upon looking at them, I knew they were going to play a game of cricket and were searching for some spot to play on. I told myself, this is the moment. I had two options at that moment. Either to keep quiet and move on and continue my walk or ask them if I could join them. I chose the latter.
I reached out to one of the guys and just muttered the words “Can I play with you guys?”. This one question turned out to be a life changing moment for me. Just by asking this question, I met some of the most incredible people in my life and have developed life lasting relationships over the period of couple of years. That was a simple question to ask, but has caused the positive domino effect in my life, both personally and professionally and I couldn’t be more grateful to this wonderful Gentlemen’s game.
That was not a short story, BTW!
Anyway, getting back to the topic, after starting playing cricket regularly and developing good rapport with some of the players, they invited me to join them for short tournament over the weekend. It was supposed to be over in a day, starting in the early morning and finishing by the day’s end. I immediately complied and said I would love to join.
This was the scene when we arrived in the morning to partake in this tournament. In the picture, you can see, Shree and Kumar. They have been the prominent influence for me as far as leadership through cricket is concerned. I loved how calm and collected Shree remains under immense pressure and tries to give his 100% for the team. On the other hand, Kumar is one of the most passionate players that I have had chance to play this game with. You don’t get surprised when you see his trophy collections, after playing a game or two with him.
After arriving at the venue, I was a doubted whether we would have a full day or playing or not. Turned out, the Sun was playing tricks on us and it started to show a sliver of rays through the thick clouds in a matter of moments. This gave us a relief and the organizer confirmed the start of the tournament.
We were scheduled to play, I think, 3 games, before competing for the big prize. Since, it was a one day event, not many teams showed up, reducing competition for us. Though we didn’t have the quantity, the quality was definitely in attendance.
Due to the time constraint and number of players available, we were just 6 people in each team. My team entrusted me with being the opener while batting. It turned out to be a good as we started putting strong totals on the board while batting first and chasing down the targets easily while batting second.
The first three games were not at all hard for us, as we swiftly sailed through those to reach the finals. I was overjoyed just to realize what had happened in the matter of a few hours. When I woke up in the morning, I didn’t know that I would return home with a trophy, be it the winners or runners trophy. As I was savoring this moment, the other two teams were battling it out to join us in the final. Kumar told me about the strong team who was favored to win and made sure I understand to put more efforts if we had to win the competition.
Like the first three games, I continued spreading some magic with my bat and we put a strong total on the board. I didn’t pay much contribution with the bat, but came in handy with the field, saving some precious runs as we won by a margin of a few runs. It was absolutely amazing feeling in the world. I didn’t know how to express my happiness, so I ended up telling the gentleman who was handing me the trophy that it was my first trophy in the US. He ended up being a generous guy who took the entire team out for BDubs.
Here’s me posing with the trophy.
Back then, I didn’t know what BDubs was and like every Indian, thought it was made of bufallo meat. Silly me! I asked my teammate whether it was okay to eat it, as he laughed it off and confirmed its chicken! Gosh, I felt like such a bum!
Anyway, it was a good day and I will cherish this day forever. This one trophy has cultivated into a collection of five more for my stay in Connecticut and I am forever grateful to my connections which I made through this wonderful game of Cricket!
Here’s the Instagram gallery.
See you!
stochasticity 
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