My experiments with the blog

I would like to start my first ever blog with my experience of the conclusion to the Summer'06! I really enjoyed the whole summer but today was the most rewarding day for me.

As a soccer freak, we all (Homarjun, Greg, Razesh and Abhishek) played the game throughout the whole summer regularly. I appreciate the efforts of Homarjun, Abhishek and Greg who were busy with their research work, still managing to take out few hours daily and getting on to the field to play a good game of soccer.

Everyday the game of soccer was being played in high spirits with players from different places and culture coming together and playing as a team. There were few Japanese players, American players, Pakistani players and few from middle east who all played to their best.
Not digressing far away and coming to the point, today was the last day of summer and we planned to end the note by playing a big soccer game i.e India Vs Japan. So everyone was very excited and curious about the game and finally it turned out to be very interesting and good friendly game.

We won by 3 goals to 1 and all credit goes to the hard work and dedication of all the boys there. I sincerely thank everyone who turned up for the game and how can I forget to thank Depti Mathur, who came specially to watch our final game and to take the pictures while we were all playing. Kudos to her!

I felt slight nerves intitially when I stepped onto the field seeing all the 14-15 Japanese players dressed up in blue T-shirts and white shorts. I saw them practising and planning strategies while we counting only our men, who's playing and who's not playing.

Finally the game started and in the beginning our game was a bit sluggish. Abhishek and Karan did a very good job at the defence and kept Japanese players away from attacking our goal. Abhishek started playing soccer this summer only and he picked this game very quickly and I can very comfortably say that I can rely on him any time and can make him play at any position with minimum worries on my mind. Homarjun also tried his best and made crucial attempts at the defence line, though he's very new to the game. In the mid, Gagan played very well and in the front, Ahmed performed a good job. Ahmed improved his game a lot. We co-ordinated each other very well and moreover he got to know my game and thats why we could make a good pair up at the front. I was also impressed seeing Razesh's game improving. Really, he polished his game very nicely, now I don't see him hurting anyone on the field. He understands the game also very well now and tries to play at one position only, though he has a tendency to run the whole field. Greg, on the other hand, opted to sit on the bench and he let other players to play which I found hard to digest. Greg is a very good player, knows and understand the game very well, he can make the game for the whole team single handedly and more importantly he has got the stamina to play long enough. He kept on sending other players in and preferred to keep himself out of the game till the half time. Due to our weak mid-field, we could not get enough chances to attack our opponents. And in the mid way of first half due to some confusion and lack of co-ordination, Japan scored a goal and were 1-0 ahead till half time. I was really not happy by Greg's decision and can argue on it any time of the day. The story and drama does not ends here.

Greg came into play from the very start of the 2nd half and rather than concentrating on the game he was still worried about the players who havn't got the chance to play the game. I was amazed! But anyways, it was just his, Sumanth's and Asad's mere presence together that we managed to score 3 goals in the 2nd half, two by Gyn and one classic goal by Asad. I would rate Asad's goal as one of best goals of the whole summer season. He came from the center line, tackled two opponents and chipped in the ball from 20 yards over the goal keepers full stretched hands up in the air.

Last but not the least to mention, Osama, our Goal Keeper. He's a really fine goal keeper whose skills you can trust any time of the day. So finally we won the game and felt very proud to come out as winners. Last time I was happy like this was during my Undergraduate studies. I still remember that moment very explicitly which was in the 5th semester when we won the Inter-Year Soccer Tournament. I got a chance to represent my year and we defeated our arch-rival one year junior team 2-1. We had an ego clash with that team and it was so relieving when we won the game, celebrated the whole night. Winning the game today refreshed my memories once again and that's why I said in the very beginning of this blog that today was a rewarding day for me. This day will also be with me in my memories for a long time now.