History in the making - The story behind The Immortals !!!

As said, it takes two to tango, but then it took 11 of us and some more to dance to the tune of a sport, called Cricket, a sport, which is so crazily followed, talked about and played all round the year in the country where we all hailed from. After all Cricket, runs in our blood, we breathe, dream and live for cricket, especially now that we get only 5 hours worth of it, on the weekends as compared to those endless summer cricket sessions during school and college days back in India ...

Well, I am not here to rant about how great the game of Cricket stands, as there are no recipies that I can describe to explain the taste of this awesome game, but I am here to jumpstart a Blog, an entity which definitely for years to come would stand out to symbolize the greatness of certain players ... Speaking about players, this Blog is all about Cricket and only Cricket ... This post is just to traverse down the memory lane, almost over a year back in 2008, when out of the blue, this team called The Immortals was formed ... Mind you, a year back, no one even cared what the name was, but this time of the year, 2 seasons old, that same name has now become a legend in the making ... Most of us out here, cannot think about Cricket without the Immortals :)

It so happened, in Feb-Mar 2008, our Ex-Captain, Savan Patel, brought the ONLY ingenious idea till date (He cannot be blamed for being a Bluish Michigan, after all Ideas are hard to come by) ... It so happened that he had played this league called Cricbay before, and he and I were discussing about registering a team and getting most of our friends here in the Bay Area to get involved in playing Cricket over the weekend ... After all it had been a long long wait to get something going in terms of sports (at-least for a majority of us), and we were almost going paranoid about putting our feet in the wet sand of old age and sinking in quite rapidly ... So that is how, The Immortals were born, and we registered, formed a team, got the necessary gear, which ridiculously consisted of only 2 bats and a set of stumps ... After all we just wanted to go out and have some fun, who thought a year back, that The Immortals are going to mean serious business down the line, and I personally never even thought that I would be creating this Blog for The Immortals ...

Well as they all say, what starts well, always ends well, even though ironically in the situation here, it never looked as if it was going to end so soon ... The Immortals started practicing, trying to shed off the rust which was for so long being accumulated on the bones for some, and for some it was just a layer of rustness which would have to be lipo-sucked to get rid of those tyres which till date have not yet deserted their faithful daddy (if you know who I mean) ... But nevertheless, the excitement of just playing Cricket was too much in the camp, and even though we lost a couple of early practice games, we were not disheartened ... It was the first time, that all of us were playing a hard-tennis ball game, on a baseball field, with some orthodox fielding restrictions ... Experience was yet to come and the team was still a baby but growing at a fast rate ...

The Regular Season 2008 started, and the team was doing quite decent enough, and everyone was having fun ... Winning was not the top most priority, but surely was needed to get the team going, and then came a hard loss, a loss which was never meant to be at the end of the first round, and it pinched everyone so hard, that for the first time, the bench was so hot and steaming about the loss, that everyone thought they had found a common goal - Winning for The Immortals ...

The second round was a tough ordain, and with all sorts of calculations in place, we were eyeing the ultimate prize of the tournament - The Platinum Cup ... End of the second round, it came down to one last game, a do-or-die situation to enter the Platinums and capture the last berth and advance to the playoffs - But as the Cricketing Gods up above thought, these bunch of chums still need to think a lot, get some bad experiences to mature as a team, after all why should they be given a rosy script ... So be it, we lost that last game too again at the end of the round, and we found ourselves playing the Gold Cup - but, to cheer us up, we were ranked # 1 in the Gold Cup.

Playoffs, the team found their act together, match after match, not one single player, but as a team we made progress and it paid off... We found ourselves playing the Gold Cup finals ... But amongst all this progress of the team, also came progress in other departments ... We got ourselves regular dose of Water, Gatorade, we also got couple of decent bats, bails and what not ... But we never got ourselves a decent enough Kit to carry these around ... (And till date while I am typing this post, we still do not have that much talked about Cricket Kit/Bag) ...

Well anyways, shedding the criticism for the existing Immortals management (after all we are going to get our own team t-shirts this season, god knows when, but we are still hoping for it), let us get back to where we were in the Gold Cup Finals - to keep it simple - WE WON THE GOLD CUP !!! The first season, that we played in Cricbay, and we were the GOLD CUP CHAMPIONS ... What would be a better morale boost to get the team going on and hold on to its players, although at any point of time it never seemed that anyone is thinking of quitting and going back to their boring lives ... We were ready for the next season (although it turned out to be a night mare with an early exit, and I am not going to post anything for that) ...

So overall it has been a long journey, and we are still no where near our destination ... The team is still hungry to win, the fire just keeps on burning within, and the desire to perform better each weekend keeps The Immortals train going .... Looking back, it has been a great pleasure and fun to be a part of this fanatic cricket lovers, non-sensical buddies, good cricketing minds, lazy arses, awesome performers (any day) and over all it has been great to be a part of The Immortals ... I hope this blog, keeps on running, and the team members at-least be pro-active and be a part of this too just like they are a part of everything else on the Team ... After all at the end it is the "TEAM" who wins and shines out in the rough :) ...

3 Cheers for The Immortals ... May we keep on winning !!! And I look forward to comments and memories of the past year from all my team members ... This could be a lot of fun to re-collect certain incidents which we always talk about ...

Samy ...