The new Freiburg Nomads: rebuilding starts for the new season

In late 1990's some British and Australian expats started the Freiburg Nomads Cricket Club. Over the years FNCC has transformed from a largely social club to a highly competitive cricket team. This change has also come with a change in the demographics of FNCC (see a previous blog entry -- changing landscape of FNCC). I now tend to believe that this also reflects the expats demographics in Freiburg. 

Despite the changing style of cricket and demographics one thing that has remained constant is that every season there is a massive change in the players. Freiburg being a relatively small University town does not offer many job prospects so we usually get young students who leave after playing for a couple of seasons -- around the time they really learn their cricket. But we have to pay this price if want to keep a high IQ for the FNCC. 

I have been part of FNCC since 2003 when we moved to the current ground at the seapark. So this is my 8th full season but I did play some matches in 2006, and 2008 as well. With such long association with the club I tend to be philosophical and metaphorical about the change that I see every season.

The best metaphor that comes to my brain is that of a river. The water that constitutes the river is always changing but still it remains the same river. This is largely because the river banks change rather slowly over time. 

So is with the FNCC. The players change but the club fundamentals have been passed form one set of players to other. The key to be a FNCC player and FNCC spirit has been to play cricket hard but fair and respect the opponents -- the way cricket should be played. Freiburg Nomads have played cricket for the sake of cricket and winning etc. have just followed. 

FNCC 2013: I am behind the camera.

We have been fortunate that every season we find some new talented and motivated players to take up the FNCC mental and help maintain the FNCC its character. So far we have been very successful in instilling the FNCC spirit in the new members that why the club has retained it character that was essentially set at its start. 

Players like Saghir Butt (since 2004), Rehan Yousaf (since 2005) and Vijay (since 2007) have remained instrumental in every success of the FNCC. A number of players besides these three largely from the class of 2011 have gone out of their way to shape FNCC's evolution in to a very good cricketting side.


This year reminds me of the year 2011, when a number of players joined us and we ended up with an amazing season. I hope that the new one who are going to be called the Freiburg Nomads i.e.

• Bala (he comes from Offenburg to play)
• Balaji
• Ehsan Bhai (he comes from Basel to play)
• Eldho
• Farookh
• Guru
• Pranjal Srivastava
• Sreedhar



FNCC 2013 -- Our captain Vijay is behind the camera.

• Vibhore Rastagi

will follow the traditions while giving FNCC a new identity and new set of successes and memories. Welcome guys. 

Also Arpit and Rahul -- welcome back after a break of one season.

The loss against GSLCC has ignited a lot of interest and highlighted the importance of the practice. The new ones are taking it very seriously. I was so pleased to see that 18 guys showed up for practice in Friday last. If this passion continues I am sure we can better the success of 2011.

With this the FNCC Future may be tense, it might also be imperfect, but it certainly looks continuous and the river called FNCC will continue...

right arm over
Arvind

FNCC crashed out of the T20 tournament - An unforgettable defeat

Finally the season started. So what if it was with a T20 match. Global warming i.e. extended winter (trust me extended winter is a consequence of global warming) and precisely timed rains (i.e. on Sundays) meant that start of cricket was considerably delayed. 

Following the changing world view of cricket, the Swiss league also decided to have a T20 tournament. Basel hosted the teams. It was a kock-out tournament. Since there were eight teams, the first round was like a quarterfinal. 

We played the second game against the Geneva Srilankan team. We had clear memories of playing the GSLCC teams in Geneva last season. We didnt do too well that time. We wanted to change things this time around. Although we could not practice much a lot was discussed before the match. Sadly lot was discussed after the match without much change in the result. And our campaign ended just after one match in the T20 tournament of the Swiss league. 

Bowling:

We got too few wickets at too long intervals
(as measured by runs scored).
[Photo courtesy: GSLCC facebook page]

Rehan won the toss. Saghir our main batsman admitted that he likes to chase first and I also clarified my preference that I prefer to draw the first blood. So we bowled first.
As a change Saghir started the bowling. He was sopt on. There was only a little shadow of his back injury. I came in as the second bowler. I had a lucky start but a pretty flattering one as I got a wicket off the first ball I bowled this year. The first spell was pretty controlled. Rehan gave us three over each. In hindsight perhaps it was not necessary but I did get my second wicket third over. 

All was well up to that point. However, there were clear indications that the GSLCC batmen were well equipped to deal with slow short balls. Rahul Raaga (welcome back) and Pranjal (playing his first match for FNCC) followed me and Saghir. Runs started flow but not too many. After 10 overs they had 60+ runs. All was normal up this point. 

Nila who came in only after 10 over bowled beautifully. He has really matured in to a fine medium pacer now. It was very good to see that he remained nerveless when he was bowling the free-hit ball -- conceded no score on that. By this time runs were starting to flow at a decent rate of 6 or 6.5 an over. Then came an over from Pranjal in which three catches were dropped near the square leg boundary and each one conceded either a four or a six. He conceded 22 runs or so. In short matches such overs are detrimental. Field was scattered and runs came even more easily. The over Rehan bowled to accelerate the over rate only accelerated the run rate. Saghir and I had only one over each and we came a bit too late to control the runs. Saghir took two wickets in his last over. I ended up with three wickets. Nila was well rewarded with two wickets.

Sadly this kind of shot were played way
too often. FNCC bowlers sent in too many
short deliveries.
[Photo courtesy: GSLCC facebook page]

Although we had an eye on the scoreboard but it was quite shocking that we had conceded 172 runs. This despite the fact that both Nila and I gave away less than 20 each. There were few byes. But Eshan looked quite comfortable behind the wickets. We had certainly conceded 40 runs too many in that ground with such heavy outfield. 

Batting:
Fazed by the target score, we were uncertain of our openers. Angelo who was very successful again GSLCC last season was supposed to open but he injured himself while fielding and wanted to wait a little. So Rahul very bravely stepped up to open with Ehsan. But in the very first over he got himself runout. This was one many such dismissals. Adnan who has had some match practice as he had played for Pak Freiburg earlier this season was elevated to one down. He looked very confident but he was undone was a brilliant piece of fielding. No fault of Adnan but we were two down without any runs of the borad. 

Saghir enetred with lot of expectations. He got gem of a delivery--- something you get once in a season. He was unlucky to get that as the first delivery he faced this season. I was not sure what was happening. We had lost more wickets than runs on the board. Batsmen after that showed little more commitment.
Angelo was the pick of our batting. He started off where he had left in Geneva last season. His technique of stepping out to play the bouncing balls again worked. He was full of confidence and runs and started to tick the score. Things started to respectable but he got himself runout. This was not a brilliance of fielding. Ehsan had by now seen three runouts. He remain on the wickets until 11th or 12th over but our fight has already ended with Saghir's wicket. Rehan who in my opinion should have gone higher up played couple of good shots but I think was succumbed by the pressure.

According to me it was an achievement that we played out 20 overs without getting bowled out. But the score of 73 in 20 overs for 9 wickets was in no way anything respectable. We avoided a defeat by 100 runs run by a whisker. 

The humiliation:
A crushing defeat by 97 runs in a 20 overs match is not just a loss. To me it was just a pure humiliation. How could we underperformed by so much? How come we did not rise up to the challenge. We cannot hide behind the reasons and excuses but the question remains to what extent this defeat reflected the new order in the FNCC?
Cricket is a mind game and there is every danger that the dents of such massive defeat will affect us in our future games. Moreover our opponents will tend to have a psychological advantage.

The excuses:
There is only a subtle difference between excuses and reasons. We can fall for the easy bit and come up with perfectly logical but incorrect causes (i.e. excuses) for our underperformance e.g.:

• First and foremost we can argue that we did not have any practice before the match
• We had 4-5 players who were either playing first time for the FNCC or were returning after few seasons. This meant that we could not plan ahead according to the strengths of our team. Perhaps also the reason for five run puts.
• Few key players (Vijay, Raghav, Arpit) were missing from the line up. 
• We struggle to place fielding when batting is done at both the ends.

These are perfectly logical reasons. But we did not lose because of any of these.

The reasons:
This is now my opinion and other may differ from me. Following were the main causes: 

• We dropped too many catches. I myself was guilty thrice. Twice I could not even reach the ball even though I should have. Why so? Part of the reason was of course we were out of practice. But also we failed to place fielding properly. Under the pressure to finish overs quickly we compromised the fielding -- especially the placement.
• Our bowlers fell in the trap of bowling short deliveries. Such bowling is effective when you have pace. When Saghir was hit for that flat six bowlers should have learned their lesson. In that heavy outfield it was not easy to cross the boundary on ground shots.
• We essentially forgot the basics. Except for one run-out (that of Adnan) other four could have been avoided. But our batsmen just forgot when to go for a run. Clearly the chase of 173 runs  clouded their judgement.
• We experimented too much with batting line up. The fact that we were playing a 20 over match affected us too much. Rehan should have stepped up. It was clear that we could not chase 173 runs against the Geneva Srilankan team. So we should have been honest and planned differently e.g. we could have assigned ourselves a reachable sub-tagtet for first 10 overs and so on...

The acceptance: 
I think after all said and done we also have to admit that the Geneva Srilankan team is a very good and to defeat them we have to raise our game to the next level. Now we have seen it twice. Hopefully when they visit us in Freiburg, it will be a different story.

What is next:
We are not so bad as the result reflected. It was just one off the matches and there is no reason to draw line through a single observation. Our opponents in the league will be making a severe mistake if the will start to evaluate us on that single defeat, which we will prove in the subsequent match that was just a statistical aberration. 
The turn up at the trainings and they way new players are getting in the grove and the older ones finding their rhythm is very promising.
The first Swiss league match  for us is still two weeks away but ground availability and global warming is unlikely to provide us much of practice time. But I am sure we will be ready... ready to correct that one statistical aberration and more.

PS: I have been thinking of writing this entry since two weeks but to write it meant to go through the agony of remembering (to an extent reliving) the match. Finally I motivated myself to do it because cricket and all the memories that come with are worth cherishing whether it is a defeat or a victory. 
PPS: This was the debut of Pranjal, Balaji and Bala for the FNCC. Aldo (also new to FNCC) was 12th man. Rahul Raaga returned to FNCC after a gap of one season.