Weekend Cricket Club

WCC

A Passionate Cricketing Tour

Silver Jubilee Celebration – Weekend Cricket Club

December 15, 2045

The gates were not opened at the Kamaraj Memorial Hall. An unmanageable crowd was waiting outside the hall with the great expectation of witnessing someone special and dear to many. They definitely had to hold their horses before being let in. The press reporters took their positions and started interviewing a few people in the mean time.

The huge security deployed at the venue seemed too small for the turnout. They were trying hard to keep things under their control. The crowd was going bananas when the gates opened, “Move, Move, Move, the gates have opened” was the only phrase which most of them said as they weren’t ready to miss even a single glimpse of a great man.

The whole stage was filled with dignitaries from various places around the planet, except for a single red chair right at the middle of the stage. All eyes were fixed on the empty red chair despite the star studded stage and most of them missed the sight of a man in his late fifties approaching the podium until he spoke.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen.”

“This was the day when we saw ton number 41 and he took us all to the land of ecstasy. We were moved to tears; as we have never experienced such joy in our lives – jumping up and down on the chairs of the old M.A.Chidambaram stadium as though we were the most blessed people on earth. That’s when we realized that a sweeper at the ground who shook hands with him that day was the most fortunate one. When just looking at him along with the other thousands gives us so much joy, why not sit beside him and have a chat?”

The eyes of every person were focused on the empty red chair when the person at the podium enthusiastically shouted- “We are privileged to have amongst us, the Chief Guest of the evening, the Modern Cricketing Don, The Maestro, the Little Master, Sir Sachin Tendulkar”.

The whole crowd was on its feet applauding Sachin Tendulkar while he went up the stage and occupied his seat. It was definitely not M.A.Chidambaram Stadium to get a standing ovation like that.

“It has taken 46 long years to talk to Sir Sachin Tendulkar. This has been one of the days we have dreamt of, from the early part of our life. This day has come in such a great manner that the embodiment of Cricket himself joins the celebration with us.”

“We were not born with a silver spoon, but we definitely had the urge, fire and passion to grow big in the field of cricket”

“We had so many ways to enjoy life to the fullest, still we met.”
“We had so many ideas on the same subject, still we met.”
“We didn’t have great things in common, still we met.”
“We didn’t belong to the same class of the society, still we met”
“Our family, our career and commitments stretched to all directions, still we met.”
“We came together with the heart to win on the field for a cause-
That’s Cricket”.

Cricket transcends all the differences and made us fight as a team. We fought as warriors and came together as a force to reckon with.

“We played mostly on weekends as most of us were students and working men, so we named our club the Weekend Cricket club. We started the club with a vision to take cricket to a new level on December 15, 2008, the day in which the blessed ones got the chance of witnessing Sachin number 41 at Chepauk.”

“We looked into all avenues to give cricket a new shape, so we started playing tennis ball tournaments for a start in 2009. We witnessed more entries than exits as we entered all the tournaments and won most of them. Then we grew to a level where we hosted the ‘All Counsels Cricket Meet’ comprising of 2000 teams in the year 2015.”

“We also got together to start a website for the club and posted quality articles on cricket which helped us to make the world stop and look at us .We were a hit not only in the electronic media but in the print media too. Newspapers weren’t an unknown destination. We started from a tit bit in the left corner of the sports page when we won the Chennai cricket tennis ball circuit and got elevated to a third page article when we opened a sports shop in the year 2017.We were a revelation when we had the inauguration of our cricket academy in 2020. All the newspapers in the city dedicated their sports column to us on December 15, 2020 as many international players visited the state of art cricket academy which was one of its kinds in the world, then.”

“The sense of gratification you experience when you achieve your goal is something unexplainable and impenetrable.”

“There were so many statements questioning the existence of the club, ridiculing its motive and the game’s capability to serve the passionate ones.”

“So many questions were answered, many hidden doors were opened and most of them who ridiculed our passion were proved wrong by our growth.”

“We were driven by passion and we worked hard for its fulfillment. We were successful and so will you be if you work hard and with passion for it.”

“I take this opportunity to thank all the founder members of WCC for staying together during the tough times for this grand occasion. I conclude my speech saying that WCC will continue to work for cricket.”

Some unwanted and irrelevant statements such as Thoonginadhu porum endhiru…. Endhiru Kartik patthu mani aachu (wake up Kartik its already ten) started mingling with the lovely speech I was rendering at the silver jubilee function of our club. I looked at all corners for the person in charge of audio in the auditorium to rectify the issue of cutting all unwanted sounds. That’s when I felt my body being shaken and rolled on a soft plain and I realized that it was time to get out of bed and the dream was too good to be true.

We have now started moving towards our dream by entering into cricket tournaments and starting a blog, the one which you are reading now. The others in the dream would fall in place soon and the dream would definitely become a reality sooner than later.

Idhuvum Kadandhupogum
Kartik Srinivasan
Founder Member, WCC