The WASHUCC faced their first true lesson on Saturday. Although WASHUCC played their hearts out against the much stronger and experienced SIUE side, they were easily beaten by 73 runs.

It was the first time that the club played a outdoors match after playing twice indoors against SLU. It was a cloudly, windy, cold day with a threat of severe thunderstorms later in the day. Twelve people turned out for the match, which consisted of Ali (Co-Captain), Apoorva (Co-Captain), Arsalan, Kiran, Samaranth, Al, Sanjeeva, Sam, Bilal, Ali, Rutvik, Karan, and Shehzad.

After winning the toss a third time in a row, WASHUCC opted to field first. Ali and Rutvik opened the bowling for WASHUCC. The first ball of Rutvik's first over went through for the first wicket to reduce SIUE to 6 for 1. However, Faizan, a talented batsman from Kutis Cricket Club, opened the floodgates for an unbelievable number of boundaries. Both Faisal and Faizan scored at a fiery rate to take SIUE to 76 after just 8 overs. At that point, Faisal fell to another Rutvik inswinger for 29. Even though the following batsmen were not able to stay at the crease for long, Faizan was continuing to plunder the WASHUCC bowlers at the other end. At one point, he scored 42 runs in a space of just ten balls. When Faizan finally fell in the 14th over when he was caught off Sanjeeva's ball, he had scored 95 runs of just 47 balls - a strike rate of 2.02 with 17 boundaries (9x4, 8x6)! SIUE finally finished their innings at 165 for seven wickets. Rutvik finished with 3 for 53 and Ali finished with 3 for 33.

The WASHUCC were faced with a difficult challenge of scoring at a rate of 12 runs per over. The pressure caught up to the top order of the WASHUCC, when they were reduced to 23 for 4 after just three overs. Nevertheless, there were still some fighters left in the batting lineup. Al and Sanjeeva paired up to take the score up to 50. Al scored at a very brisk pace, taking every run from every ball. He was finally bowled for 28 off Alees's bowling. Sanjeeva was also bowled for 10 off Faizan's offbreak. However, Ali came down the order to score a quick 16 with two boundaries to take the score up into the 90s. Masroor finally ended the match, when he bowled Ali on the first ball of the penultimate over. WASHUCC finished 92 all out, seventy-three runs from the target.

Even though the final score looks like a crushing loss for WASHUCC, there was some good cricket by the team. They played well against a team that had one US national player.

-Shehzad Siddiqui (March 31, 2001)

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