KALA Gopi Memorial cricket match was held on a bright and sunny day on Saturday, 22nd August 2009 at the Bishop’s Stortford College grounds. The well-maintained cricket grounds were a pleasure to play on and were made available to KALA by the efforts of the Gopinath family. What began as a relaxing day with much catching up on news of friends and strolls around the grounds surrounding the cricket pitch soon took on a competitive air with the men’s match between the adults and youth producing several exciting moments of play.
Halftime came in the form of a break for lunch, which had all the nostalgia of an Onam lunch back in Kerala. The Onasadya included all the traditional dishes and more and was the result of concerted culinary effort by the ladies and some men of the association under the supervision of Dr Raji Baburaj.
The afternoon saw the men’s match come to a conclusion with the youth team led by Praveen Gopinath bagging the KALA Gopi Memorial rolling cricket trophy yet again! They made the required 141 runs with fewer than 28 overs with a loss of 6 wickets. The man of the match trophy was shared by Rahul Krishnan for a well-rounded performance scoring 24 runs and taking 2 wickets and 2 catches and Shiva Krishnan who exhibited excellent batting skills with 61 runs. The champagne moment went to Rahul Krishnan for a catch that got Jai out from Gautam’s bowling, which involved stretching to his right to make the single-handed catch. The spirited and best young player at 8 years of age was Jaidev from the youth team. Dr Jose Mathew with help from Mr Sethumadhavan Menon and Dr Vijayanand acted as the umpires. The task of score keeping was placed in the capable hands of Mr Gopalakrishnan and Mr Mony.
With some skilful planning, a women’s cricket match took place alongside the men’s game in a sheltered corner of the cricket grounds. The umpiring was done by Rishi Krishnan. The teams were made up of all ages and sizes and the game was interspersed with a lot of laughter and camaraderie. Jansi’s team came up trumps. The woman of the match trophy went to Dr Shashi Gopinath.
It was another great KALA event!
