Loss hasn’t done harm to our morale

The Ahmedabad Rockets’ launch in the Indian Cricket League (ICL) has been action-packed.

We have experienced all the emotions that a cricketer can feel on a cricket field in our two games so far. The two games - a win against the Chandigarh Lions in the tournament opener and then a loss against the Delhi Giants on Sunday - turned out to be in contrasting style for us.

The good win first up was a match where we did not do anything wrong right from the word go, whereas against the Giants it was exactly the opposite case. We could hardly get our act together and eventually suffered from a heavy loss.

Obviously it was disappointing to lose in such manner. The key turned out to be losing a too many wickets in the first six overs. Obviously Delhi side played very well. They affected two crucial run outs - of Wavell Hinds and Murray Goodwin - which set us completely on the back foot.

But I think with three wickets lost in the fourth over, there wasn’t much scope to come back into the match and that’s what exactly happened.

With two of our internationals departing early on, the experiment of using a pinch-hitter at No. 3 - probably the first such instance in the ICL - did not work either. After the fall of Sachin Dholpure, we thought we might send in a pinch-hitter to up the ante, but sadly with both the internationals getting out at the other end, Rakesh Patel didn’t have a choice but to hang in there.

However, what’s important for us is that the loss hasn’t done any harm to our morale. Since this is our first outing in the ICL, we are not expecting big things in this tournament.

Rather than bothering about winning or losing, we are trying to play to the best of our abilities. So, we all are geared up to face the Mumbai Champs on Tuesday and are looking forward not to repeat the same mistakes that we committed on Sunday.