A match to remember

Three years ago I named my counter strike team “Anti Slashdot”. Slashdot is the nick name of my ‘old’ friend Osama Khalid. Back then I was pissed that he didn’t take me in his team because I was his friend, so I went head hunting and gathered whoever I knew and made a team out of a bunch of people who didn’t knew each other.

Believe it or not, here is the lineup of my first team : Buntu,Akif,Bassim,Danyal,Mustafa. People who are of my batch may find this very interesting.

I did win the first round but lost the next and was knocked out. I was very sad. My friend went on to the finals.

An year came and went … and Gaming Extreme Tournament again happened at FAST. Once again I went onto my knees to go into my ‘old’ friend’s team. But was not accepted due to my inferior skills. Although others did find a way in.

This time I tried to regroup my old team, but some of them had left the university, the ones that were left were Buntu and Akif. To my horror they had already made a team with our other friends. After a lot of crying at Achanak Hotel, Buntu agreed to do a one-on-one match with me at Tabish’s place, the winner will stay in the team. I lost the match. And hence with no team again.

But by this time our friend circle had grown into something good, so I forged a team with some other friends, unfortunately we were not good enough, and hence were knocked out in round two of GET. Sadness prevailed. My friend’s team played the finals again.

The third year was similar, after little effort I accepted that my place is with the team that played with me the last time, so we went again, and lost in round 2. Once again. Though, my friend’s team was crowned the champion team of FAST.

Then came my senior year, before I move on, let me tell you I am very sentimental when it comes to PC games, because they are the very few things that I am a bit good at. At the start of the semester, my ‘old’ friend installed Counter Strike in all of our FYP lab computers. Which resulted in gaming all day around. Luckily, I played a bit better, enough to catch the interest of a guy named ‘D-TOX’ who also played good too.

Before the tournament started, I went on a similar witch hunt, the one that reminded me of freshmen year. Even though my old team wanted to play including me, I ditched them, for just one reason, the reason that was now three years old, to qualify to a round where I would face my ‘old’ team but more importantly actually WIN the tournament.

Along with D-TOX and his friends we forged a team, we practiced, discussed strategies. This team ditched two of their players for me and my brother, who also came in at the last moment. Due to this I faced a lot of heat from the aggrieved party. Also my best friend Usama Jabbar was also angry that I ditched him.

But everything was acceptable for the ultimate goal. We went in and won our first round 15-0. This match actually gave me hope of things to come, out of the 32 teams we were in the round of 16. In this round we thrashed another team from our batch. And reached the final 8 teams.

Here we faced some gurus from Telecom dept. We comfortably beat them and were in the final 4.

Our semi-final match was with my ‘old’ friend. Pumped up. Excited. Scared. We went it.

And for the next 30 minutes, everyone in lab 6 witnessed one of most entertaining match ever. They never thought that under-dogs like us would be here.

We played neck to neck with them and held our nerves. But unfortunately, our skill, team chemistry and experience came in the way. The only thing that kept us going was courage, hope and emotions.

We lost to a far superior team. We are either the 3rd or 4th ranking team in FAST. It may not mean much to anyone other than myself. But in the end that is what matters the most: The thing that matters most to you.

I thank Tabish Ahmed, Basit Moosani and everyone else who were part of GET to give us an opportunity.

An opportunity to do something that is more closer to the heart than the mind …

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