“Come on, come on, you can do it!” my teammates cheered me up.

One Saturday morning, we had a cricket match in school. It was between grade eight and nine. I was elected as the captain of the grade nine team.

At first, we felt overconfident about the match, but when we saw the eighth graders bowling and batting during practice, we were shocked to see that they were performing much better than us.

I went ahead for the toss. “Heads” I called.

“It’s tails,” the umpire announced.

So the opponent team chose to bowl first, which was a good strategy. I sent my openers to start the innings.

“Play ball,” the umpire announced.

“Noooo!” I shouted my lungs out as my opener was clean bowled at the first ball of the innings. He was among the best players in our team.

“The ball swing so swiftly that I couldn’t see it,” he explained.

I sent another batsman from our team. He scored some runs, but we had a very low run rate.

After eight overs, we had a score of just 40 runs, with just four wickets in hand. I then decided to bat myself. I played the first ball and was shocked to see the ball swinging. I understood the first two balls and then started my strategy of power hitting. We had a partnership of 48 runs on just 24 balls. After the 12 overs were completed, we had a score of 89 runs.

“Come on! we can do it,” I encouraged my teammates. I sent our fastest bowler to bowl the first over.

“Yayyyy!” we shouted as the batsman got bowled on the third ball. I sent a spinner to bowl the fourth over and my strategy worked as he gave only two runs and took two wickets. During the sixth over, the batsman played a shot towards me and it came so quickly that I didn’t see it coming and it hit my head straight.

I fainted there and was taken to the school nurse immediately. And a substitute was brought to play on place of me. I got a check-up and was asked to take a rest of 30 minutes. I asked the score of the team, which was 10 overs and 78 runs with two wickets in hand.

I suggested to the vice-captain to give the second last over to the best bowler of the team, named Ali. He had bowled three overs and gave only 13 runs and took three wickets. He bowled the over well and took the one crucial wicket and now it was the last over.

Now only one spinner was left to bowl. Due to our strategy we couldn’t let the spinner bowl the last over and so the vice-captain came to ask me if I was in the position to bowl the last over. I had pain, but I was ready to do it for my team. The opponent needed seven runs from the last over, with one wicket in hand.

I bowled the first three balls dot, but on the fourth ball a four was scored. The match became intense as three runs were needed from two balls.

“Well done!” the vice-captain chee­red as the fifth ball also went dot.

“Catch it!” the keeper shouted at the top of his voice, the ball went high up in the air where a fielder was already placed by me. Everyone had their eyes on the ball.

We were frozen, the moments felt like hours, and then I screamed as the fielder caught the ball and it was an out.

“Hoooorayyyyyyy!” we all cheered. Everyone was happy after winning the match. We got the trophy and the cash prize of Rs10,000. We all went for a lunch to celebrate our victory.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 10th, 2022