Saturday 27 September 2008

Oranje Originale

Today we had a soccer fest in my company. After my name was forcibly put by my well intentioned colleagues, I had no option but play. I was put in Orange Originals team and was given a cute orange coloured kit too.
Aha! Chance to be a Nistelrooy, a Persie, a Sneijder or if lucky, a frigging Van Basten!

As usual is with amateur football, everyone, I mean everyone, wanted to play forward. We had a mail list of my team mates where we were discussing about at which positions people would play.
There were 9 in the team, of which 6 wanted to be forwards and claimed to be good strikers and bad tacklers. Rest three, including me, didn't even bother sending a read receipt to those mails. What enthusiasm!

So the day arrived. I should say, the event was brilliantly planned. 100 people playing football, running 10 miles each, on a nice, soothing 40 degree celsius, 95% humid day. There was a shamiana, where tasty breakfast was provided. Cheese sandwiches, masala dosa and the works.
Were we going to play football?

After some passing and shooting practice, we decided our spots. Since I could run fast and had a non existent left leg, I was made a right winger.
Yay!!! Beckham!!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The goal kick from rival keeper reached me. I somehow kept it in control with my, now bulging, paunch and started running with the ball.

Huff. Puff.

I looked around to see if I could pass to anyone. My captain was shouting at me to pass the ball to him. The only problem was, he was standing even behind the goalkeeper of the other team, since there was no offside, and there were exactly 5 players of the opposition between us

So, I did something which was vaguely close to dribbling and neared one of their midfielders.
I tried to pass the ball to my team mate, but my footballing talent betrayed me, as I flung my leg above the ball and the ball stayed there itself. But this fooled the other guy and he went off balance. So I could go straight on. Wow! A fake pass!

I started running again.

Huff. Puff.

This time, a small defender, roughly the size of Inzamam ul Haq and with a very close resemblance to Evander Holyfield, marched towards me, like an animal that is no longer existent in financial markets.

To say that I was afraid would be an understatement. I didn't know what to do.

Out of instinct, or pure luck, or whatever, I pushed the ball between his legs and before he could turn, I ran around him, and took the ball and somehow with a huge amount of divine intervention planted it into the net.

GOOAAAALLLLLLL!!!!!!

I just went fucking crazy. Didn't know what to do. Put the jersey over my head and ran around the ground, showing my paunch and my poonal in the process to the crowd around. Drama King!

God, I still can't believe this. I really can't.

But the sad part is, this historic event was neither photographed nor captured in a video.

Just like Kapil Dev's 175, yet another episode of sporting excellence went away uncaptured, but will always be in public memory, atleast my memory. :-)

4 comments:

Sujith said...

hahahahaa. . .swaamiye sharanam!!!

Sandhya Iyer said...

A local Football match made to look like the climax of a Hindi flick, interspersed with a La Saurav Ganguly act after the goal. Paunch and Poonal.. Neat, very neat.. :)

AbhiC said...

nice work of fiction dude!
u almost made me believe that u hit a goal :D

Prabha said...

Whatttaaaaa Game it isssss :D!

Cool desc!