By: Sidharth Madhav ’11
If you are a Thunderbird student, you most definitely would know at least one Indian on campus. That would mean you are aware of two things quintessentially Indian: Bollywood and Cricket. We got a dose of Bollywood during the last regional night. Let’s talk cricket, which as many would know, is a religion in India. We eat cricket, sleep cricket and breath cricket. It is also a strange game (hey, blame the British for inventing it!). A match can last five days, involves long and fine legs, silly points, googlies, slips, flippers and many other peculiarities. We Indians have brought with us the flavour of cricket to Thunderbird. If you ever heard screams of “Howzzzaaaaat!!” around the campus do not be alarmed. They are not from any animals roaming the campus. In fact, this is the sound of cricket. Cricket maybe a difficult game to understand for many. It is, however, not too different from baseball. Each team consists of eleven players with bowlers (pitchers), batsman (hitters) and fielders. The objective in a nutshell, is to hit the maximum number of runs and to get the other team out before they can score those runs. Come on over to the rugby field/tennis courts to get involved in the game and to learn more about it.
The Thunderbird Cricket Club has been creating a legacy and tradition of cricket here on campus since the mid-2000s. Through the dedicated efforts of all the members both past and present and the TSG, we have grown the club from scratch to the second largest club on campus. The Thunderbird Cricket Team is currently practicing rigorously for the West Coast College Cricket Championship to be held in Los Angeles over the Thanksgiving break. Our team performed above expectations and finished in second place last year. Thunderbird has a proud history of participating in these tournaments. This spring, the team travelled to Fort Lauderdale, Florida to take part in the American College Cricket Championship which consisted of about 36 teams, including teams from U Penn, U of Florida and USC (with whom we have a fierce rivalry going on). Our team did a great job representing Thunderbird and show casing our brand. In fact, during the opening ceremony that was broadcasted live over the web, there was even a special mention of Thunderbird being the only business school represented at the tournament. It was a proud moment to be a Thunderbird. We did exceptionally well, beating the University of Iowa and preventing USC from going through to the next round. We are all aware about the power of team work and pulling through together but seeing it in action by our cricket team was fantastic and inspiring!
Sriram Sridharan (an ace all-rounder) is the captain of the side. He leads with a lot of passion and is putting the team through its paces. The other dedicated, talented members of the team are: Venkat Srinivasan (wicket-keeper and an aggressive batsman), Rohan Verma (a classy opening batsman), Kaushik Mandy (the anchor batsman), Amit Ganeti (the yorker specialist), Vinod Jayavelu (opening batsman and accurate leg spin bowler), Vinit Kulkarni (talented southpaw), Darshan Shah (our secret weapon), Saurabh Aphale (incisive fast bowler), Akshay Sutrave (a tiger on the field), Karan Passey (deadly left arm fast bowler), Amar Haware (flawless fielder), and Vivek Pappu (the surprise package). The team is managed by the ever reliable Samir Bhathija.
As the team prepares hard, let us unite in wishing them all the success and good luck for the challenges that lay ahead. Go forth and make us proud!!