It was a tough first day for Mayank, and it all started as soon as he came on for a bowl. Rafeeq, his captain, dropped a sitter off Mayank’s first delivery of the season. Rafeeq then moved a few steps to his right, probably hoping to be better placed to field and catch the next one that comes his way.

Stupendously, another catch came Rafeeq’s way, off the very next ball, and some may call this a sitter too. However, the ball and Rafeeq appeared to be in different zip-code’s, courtesy of Rafeeq’s pro-active (or was it reactive?) move a minute back. Of course, given that he’d just dropped a sitter off the previous ball, there were no guarantees that he’d have taken the second catch anyway!

The batsmen were able to amble through for an easy single on this occasion, which very likely pricked Mayank. As if that weren’t enough, the fielder towards whom the ball went, tried to hit the stumps on the full for no apparent reason – the batsmen had already completed the single. To rub salt into a growing wound, there were two over-throws.

Mayank’s spell of three overs went for more than 20 runs. Things certainly weren’t going Mayank’s way!

If Mayank thought that the day couldn’t get any worse, he was in for a seriously rude shock – Rafeeq, having dropped two catches, had the audacity to compare Mayank’s bowling to mine (Raghuvir) – really? I wonder if that was a sledge aimed at Mayank, or a compliment passed my way!

At times, you just have to go through the motions, and hope a new day starts soon. When it came to batting, Mayank scratched around for a 6th ball duck – off the bowling of Adai, and caught by me!

To cap off a really ugly day, Pune Warriors, lead by Sourav ‘Dada’ Ganguly, beat the Chennai Super Kings. Certainly an inauspicious start to the season! Hopefully, just Murphy’s law toying with Mayank.

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