The BOSM English Press sat down with Dhairya Shah, the captain of the BITS Pilani Cricket Team, for a quick conversation about the team, their preparation, and more.

Dhairya has been playing cricket for about thirteen years now. At the school level, he played in many inter-school tournaments and also played for the Baroda U-14 team. He was recruited into the BITS team in his first year and has been playing on the team since then as a batsman. 

In BOSM, cricket is played in the T-20 format, with each match being a knockout match. The tournament starts with a round of sixteen. The matches are held on the Med-C ground in the afternoon. Currently, the team has 25 players, sixteen of whom will be playing for BOSM. When asked about the team’s training regimen, Dhairya said that they train on weekdays and play practice matches on weekends. The training starts with half an hour of warm-up, followed by open net sessions on most days, with fielding practice days thrown in once or twice a week. 

Speaking on the team’s performance in the previous editions of BOSM and recent tournaments, Dhairya mentioned that they had won the gold medal in BOSM 2018 and were eliminated in the quarter-finals in 2019. Following BOSM 2019, they won the tournament in Manipal University Jaipur which was the last tournament the team participated in. There were no tournaments for a year because of COVID, and in the previous semester they had InterBITS which got cancelled. ‘But the team regularly plays practice matches with the BKBIET team and the Pilani Cricket Academy team and has a lot of experience playing together’, the skipper added.

Commenting on his experience as captain, Dhairya talks about how he has to think for the entire team and set the field, position the fielders and think about which bowlers to bowl. He said that he now had to think quite a lot on the field and this aspect was new to him. He also mentioned that this is the first time the cricket team has appointed a coach. Dhairya said he had an overall positive experience interacting with the CoSSAc and the institute. His only complaint was the lack of floodlights in the Med-C ground which forced them to wrap up their training sessions as soon as it turned dark and meant that they would have to play their practice matches in the afternoon heat. 

Talking about the competition, Dhairya explained that BOSM regularly sees two or three colleges from DU, which are sports quota teams and play quite well, and SRCC was also a regular participant. Approximately 26 teams had registered but only sixteen were selected to participate in the event. ‘We aren’t expecting any of the IITs to participate this time due to clashing schedules of BOSM with IIT Kanpur’s sports fest.’

Opining on their chances this BOSM, the captain confidently said that he felt very good about the team, as they are not dependent on just two or three batsmen or bowlers. He claimed to have a very balanced team that he was sure can perform well.