UCC (United Cricket Club) founded in 2003, is one of the premier cricket team in Central Ohio (Columbus).UCC has been successfully conducting 20/20 tournament with participation from 24 teams for last 2 years,starting in the month of April. UCC team conducts its practice in Rhodes Park (West of Columbus downtown at West Broad Street)

United Cricket Club is one of the oldest Cricket club in Central Ohio, started by cricket enthusiasts. UCC is a professional, fair, impartial, unprejudiced and unbiased Cricket club and the fastest growing Cricket club in  Greater Columbus area. UCC is dedicated to the promotion of the sport of cricket among the local communities. The club membership is open to anyone with an interest in the game of cricket.

Proceeds from the UCC T20 Cup tournament goes towards paying for tournament awards, upkeep of ground  facilities and promotion of the Game of cricket in Central Ohio.

UCC T20 Cup is a twenty over format cricket tournament game organized by UCC by inviting best teams in and around the mid-west region. The tournament has approximately 70 games and spans 2-3 month. Games are played on weekend’ (weather permitting) in over 10 cricket grounds located in Columbus, Dayton,    Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo, Akron, Indiana and Kentucky. The first stage of the tournament is a round robin where each team plays against every other team within their group.

Weather - It was colder than a room full of ex-wives.

Pitch Condition – No bounce, not even if a cheer leader is jumping up and down.

Toss – CCC Blue won the toss and elected to field.

While the Pre-game huddle speech from the skip is fresh in memory, 6 batsmen were back in the dugout. At 15 for 6, 5 of the 6 batsmen that got out were still cold and were hiding in their cars while Chandru was steaming with anger as he was adjudged LBW. The only justification for a raised finger from the umpire is that perhaps he was trying to stretch it because of the cold but it just happened at the wrong time.

CCC bowlers were on a roll. They couldn’t do anything wrong. UCC gave away 5 wickets to Madhu.

Meanwhile audience started leaving the field. It’s no lie, there was one cricket enthusiast who wanted to see how UCC was doing and wanted to come out to watch a game of cricket and left in less than 5 minutes after he checked the score when UCC was 15/6.

Back at the pitch, Skip and Vice played sensibly and put a partnership together with a little bit of luck and a lot of patience. Skip got out in the 13^th over with the score at 64 for 18 runs. Mayur joined Bhavin and brought the score to 120 with some miss shots, big shots and quick singles.

Lou Duva was of course talking about boxing but this is true for any sport. Cricket is no different. This is a perfect example.

From 16/5 to 120/8 gave a fresh hope and confidence to the team. CCC found the key to success but UCC gave everything and changed the lock.  Here’s what happened.

A barrage of quick, nippy short pitched deliveries from Subodh started off UCC with a wicket in first over but Pawan and Ravi Darbha put up a very good partnership and made sure CCC is sitting pretty. Spinners were introduced by UCC and wickets fell at regular intervals with Mayur doing the trick every time the ball was handed over to him.

Subodh, Mayur, Manas and Praveen finished off the last few over’s for UCC and made sure CCC didn’t reach the target and won by three runs.

Overall it was a great game of cricket on a cold day. With lots of passion, love towards the game and with itching urgency for the next game,I will sign off.

Straight Up!

Praveen Bulusu