FINALS:--- Keyur's v/s Swadesh's

Keyur's side win comprehensively.

Led brilliantly with the bat and ball by captain Keyur all players chipped in with vital runs to push the score to 131 while batting first. Under pressure for the first time in the tournament Swadesh's side underperformed with the bat. A brilliant victory for Team 2. It has been a roller coaster dream for them... More to follow.

Day 2 updates-II..

Keyur's v/s Chandu's

Match result :

Game-6:--- Keyur's team beats Chandu's team with 31 balls to spare.

Chandu's side is the best bowling unit in this tournament and they are up against the second strongest batting line-up of Keyur's side. The only worry for Chandu's side is their batting, with Chandu not contributing as much as he has previously and with Ajit bordering on in-consistency their batting is fragile. Chandu's side won the toss and decided to bat first and everything that could go wrong went wrong. With just 30-35 runs on the board both Chandu and Ajit were back in the pavilion. Sandeep tried his best but did just enough to save them a few blushes. They scored just 56 in 10 overs. The lowest total of the tournament. Well bowled Keyur and teammates. But  the match was far from over.

                    It boiled down to run rate and the scenes all around field house were that of anxiety and confusion. Manzeer was working furiously on his laptop and the rest of the players mobbed him. If they all hated maths all their life it was not evident here as they all lapped every bit of numbers that Manzeer mumbled. The magic numbers required by Keyur's side were 57 in 5 overs.

                   Can they do it against the fast and furious duo of Sandeep and Chandu? Just to remind you earlier these same bowlers had turned the tables on Jayashankar's side while defending 70 odd runs in an previous match, but that was 10 overs, this is 5. Do they have enough steam left? Will Keyur and Varma show us some black magic? Magic, it was, as Keyur turned into a necromancer and did some vodoo on the opening bowler Chandu as he clubbed him for 4 sixes in the very first over. The match was effectively sealed, but not before Sandeep showed everyone why he is the most feared bowler at Utah state university as he took out both Keyur and Varma (or Aditya(bad memory!!)), but it was too little too late for them. With just 10 required of the last over Chandu faltered again and then bowled 4 continuous wides to hand Keyur's side an emphatic victory. A victory to cherish not just because now they had qualified for the finals, but also because they had been pushed to the wall and they had to come up with something special to stop the rut they had put themselves in. A special victory for a special team. Keyur shone the brightest but the victory was set up some accurate bowling first up by all bowlers including Aditya,shanti,Varma and Keyur himself.
                  The net run rate chart below shows how close keyur's and Jaya's side were.

Formula used:  ((No. of runs scored/No.of balls faced) - (No. of runs given/No. of balls bowled))

Team 1: ((69+72+55/60+48+60) - (137+61+56/60+48+29)) = -0.6874 (Chandu)

Team 2: ((126+83+56/60+60+29) - (131+142+55/60+60+60)) = -0.0437 (Miscalculated the score as 142)
            ((126+83+56/60+60+29) - (131+137+55/60+60+60)) = -0.0159 (Keyur)

Team 3: ((131+61+99/60+48+60) - (126+72+100/60+48+58)) = -0.0630 (Jayashankar)

Team 4: ((137+137+100/60+60+58) - (83+69+99/60+60+60)) = +0.7067(Swadesh)

                             Team 2 sneaked ahead with the skin of their teeth with the difference in run rate between theirs and Jaya's being in 2nd decimal places. They now face the all conquering juggernaut of Swadesh's side. They have the momentum with them and this win gives them the right shot of adrenalin to probably put up a good fight. The grand finale should be interesting, it will be match between high spirits of one team and the tremendous consistency of the other.

Day 2 updates-I..

Two games were played yesterday. Remember Swadesh's side has to beat Jayashankar's side and Keyur's side has to beat Chandu's for this to be a three way tie between the rest three teams.

The result of the first match is:

Game-5:--- Swadesh's team beats Jaya's team by 1 runs.

The first game started at 12:30 p.m, winning the toss Swadesh's side with two comprehensive victories in the last two games decided to do things differently by bowling first. Jaya's team has lots of big hitters but can they cope with the accurate bowling attack of Swadesh's side was the question on everyone's mind. As always Digant the aggressive left-hander opened the batting, but played sensibly curbing his natural aggressive instincts. Manzeer took charge of the bowling attack for Swadesh and countered the big hitters Jayshankar, Shashank and Sushant with some crafty leg spin. Big hitters like the ball coming on to their bats, which is what they were not offered by Swadesh's side. Swadesh and Vaibhav were as accurate as ever and Nagy's intelligent bowling helped restrict the batting side to 99 runs in 10 overs.

                                        Already in the finals, Swadesh's side tried to test their batting by allowing Porter and Vaibhav to open the innings. Porter played cricket for the first time in this tournament but had been shielded in the earlier matches. Vaibhav too was opening the batting after a long time. With Jaya's attack bowling quick the going was tough. Vaibhav was asked to retire after 2 overs and the in-form Tarun immediately showed the reason why he was so highly rated. Porter got out the next over and then Nagy, the bedrock of team 4's batting joined Tarun. Runs came thick and fast even though the run rate had climbed to 15 an over. Then against the run of play Tarun got out. Swadesh joined Nagy and more sensible hitting followed. Jayashankar tried all his options, but was just not able to control the runs flow defending a smallish target. Poorna, the unorthodox off-spinner created some trouble with his turn and bounce but once his three overs were safely negated it was a matter of hitting the bad balls. Nagy got out with just 15-20 required of 2 overs, which Manzeer and Swadesh were able to get with one ball to go.

                         Close game and the result certainly opened the tournament up as all the other three teams had the opportunity to qualify. This close game did not hurt Jayashankar's run rate and was the team with the best run rate amongst the three sides. Chandu's side just had to win the next game to qualify for the finals. Keyur's side had the toughest task as they not only had to beat Chandu's side but had to do that in a comprehensive manner as their run rate was hurt bad in the big loss against Swadesh's side earlier. Game-6 follows.

Game 1-4 Scorecards

Day 1 results and player standings..

Four games were scheduled today. There were two high scoring games involving Swadesh's side and two edge of the seat thrillers played between Jay's,Keyur's and chandu's sides.

The match results are:

Game-1:--- Swadesh's team beats Chandu's team.
Game-2:---Jayashankar's team beats Keyur's team.
Game-3:---Swadesh's team beats Keyur's team.
Game-4:---Chandu's team beats Jayashankar's team.


Two games remain in the qualifying stages and all three teams other than Swadesh's side which most probably has qualified, can make it to the finals. In the case of all of them having equal number of wins then the equation will come down to net run rates. Lots of permutation and combinations possible. The captains will probably have a sleepless night tonight. We will soon update the match reports and post some action pictures.
Meanwhile you might want to have a look at individual player standings for the man of the series here:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Ars0AWIoHEpYdGMxbEUxelA0SVFOcGEybFhZWWFOM0E&hl=en

The Excitement Begins::--Spring Tournament kicks off..

Although the Fall tournament is the marquee tournament that the USU-Cricket Club with generous sponsorship from the Indian Students organization (ISA) organizes, the Indoor tournament is definitely the most popular format. The USU- International students council too has sponsored a friendly match this season. These are all good signs for the game of cricket at Utah state. 

Coming back to the tournament, it is the T20 equivalent of test cricket. You get fast paced entertainment with a lots of excitement and the matches are almost never one -sided. Different sets of skills are required to excell in this format as teams score in excess of 120 runs in 10 overs. The game is a field full of landmines for bowlers, with even mishits crossing the boundary nets there is not much that a bowler can do. The bowlers have to play a game of chess within the game of cricket to win mental battles with the opposing batsmen. All said and done the bowlers do get to boost their individual averages.    

So get ready for three days of non-stop fun and excitement. The venue is the Nelson Field house, we hope see you all there. GO, AGGIES.......................

Here are the fixtures and teams for the Indoor cricket tournament.

Fixtures:

Monday 21st December :
Team 1 Vs Team 4 : 09:00 a.m to 10:30 a.m
Team 2 Vs Team 3 : 11:00 a.m to 12:30 p.m
Team 2 Vs Team 4 : 01:00 p.m to 02:30 p.m
Team 1 Vs Team 3 : 03:00 p.m to 04:30 p.m

Tuesday 22nd December:
Team 3 Vs Team 4 : 01:00 p.m to 02:30 p.m
Team 1 Vs Team 2 : 03:00 p.m to 04:30 p.m

Wednesday 23nd December:
Finals : 11:00 a.m to 12:30 p.m
Presentation Ceremony: 1:00 p.m to 01:30 p.m

Team 1 :
1) Chandrasekhar Vijyapurpu (C)
2) Sandeep Buddala
3) Ajit Makhija
4) Prateek
5) Aswini Rao
6) Yogendra
7) Shashank Chauhan

Team 2 :
1) Keyur Payak (C)
2) Verma Datla
3) Chakradhar Kasa
4) Aditya Jain
5) Santhi Swarup
6) Nithin Reddy
7) Rajesh Kamatanam

Team 3 :
1) Jai Shankar Byrraju (C)
2) Sushanth Byreddy
3) Purna Kanagala
4) Shashank Anumula
5) Nagaravind
6) Digant Vyas
7) Shravan Macherla

Team 4 :
1) Swadesh Patra (C)
2) Nagendra Jayaraj
3) Manzeer
4) Tarun Mishra
5) Gowtham Morab
6) Vaibhav Ghadiok
7) Porter Illi

Overs per Innings:
Each innings is played for 10 overs Max.
It is the responsibility of the captains to ensure that their teams arrive on time at Nelson Fieldhouse. The matches will start strictly according to the schedule. If you have any further queries, feel free to contact Santhi Swarup K (435-881-0671) or Manzeer.

Readers, We are back, actively blogging. Reason?? The indoor tournament is about to begin, but before that as promised I will give you the details of the last match with Davis bombers. Not all our regular players could make it for the match so we had a few debutants, Vinod and Aswani.

Manzeer was also back after a long time. We won the toss and elected to field as the pitch is always wet and uneven during the first innings. Jayashankar and Keyur opening our attack created quite a few problems for the davis bombers, but credit must be given to them as they played sensibly and saw off the difficult period. Manzeer bowled a beautiful first over. He is difficult to read for any new player as he has the action of an off-spinner but bowls leg spinners. Before the drinks break we were on top with not many runs scored. But after the break the opposing batsmen Mahmud and Omar had gained confidence and had played themselves in, they cut lose scoring almost 40 runs in the next three overs. They ultimately set us a stiff target close to 160 in 25 overs with Omar scoring almost 75 runs and was ably supported by Mahmud. Our aggressive opening batsman Digant got hit in the forehead while keeping wickets, so that was an area of concern in the big chase. Luckily he recovered from the blow and led our chase.
               We were slow getting off the blocks and then the other opener Manzeer took a blow on his elbow and had to retire hurt. Swadesh came in to replace Manzeer, the going was steady but slow. The pressure finally told on players as Digant, Keyur, Swadesh, Asif all perished trying to accelerate the scoring. It all followed the usual pattern and once again Chandu had to do the recovery act.

The asking rate was tough even for him with close to 80 runs required off 5-6 overs. Some clever bowling changes and fielding by the Bombers meant that we ultimately ended 30 runs short. A comprehensive victory for them, we played well in phases but couldn't maintain our focus for long durations. We probably lost the match in the first three overs after the drinks break when we allowed them to score too many runs.

But that is how the game of cricket is. On that note we end our coverage for the outdoor cricket events by the USU-Cricket team during this season.  More exciting events follow as the Spring-Indoor tournament begins on Monday 21st December 2009. The game is the same but the players are on overdrive. To set you in the mood relive Yuvraj's six sixes in an over here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59uoiXf9I7U

Last match of the season with Davis Bombers of Layton.

We will come up with the rest of the tournament stories later. For now we are looking forward to Sunday's match at Layton. It will be the last match playing for USU for many of our players, like Chandu, Atul, Varma.. Hope to see them off with a big win. Our batting is bolstered by the return of Keyur and if Atul shows some of the form that were the tournament highlights then our Chandu dependent batting will finally show its true potential. Our bowling too looks in good health as both Varma and Jayshankar are back from India. It will be Sandeep's first match at Layton. It is generally tough for bowlers to adjust if they are bowling in the first innings as the run up is grassy and the moisture in the morning makes steaming in hard almost impossible. But bating is nightmarish in the first innings. If Sandeep gets going then by the end of the game the Layton guys will be going home with a lot of bruises. Wish us Luck.

Game 3 (Manzeer v/s Kalyan). Atul ShahInning..

Confident with victory in our previous outing, we chose to bat on winning the toss. Ketan and Aditya again opened for us and scored some quick runs. Coming in at number 3 was the left-handed Saurav, promoted in the batting order to bring in some variety in a team full of right handed batsmen. Sadly the move didn't work. Losing 3 quick wickets and not enough runs on the board, yet another collapse looked imminent, but a "tough got going". In an inspired move Manzeer promoted himself in the batting order, even ahead of nagy. Now, Manzeer is not your typical textbook batsman, but isn't he effective?? !! His strength lies on the off-side when he scores with the bat and on the on-side when he scores with the extras. Many people have a fairly good idea of where their off-stump is but manzeer probably knows his leg-stump location within an accuracy of millimeters. Manzeer scored 43 runs in the innings (the highest score in the tournament, yet) and probably got 10 more by way of wides down the leg-side, but more importantly demoralized the opposition with his unconventional style. He got some ballistic support from nagy (33 runs) who made the quad look like a parking lot.. Nothing to write about Kalyan's bowling attack here. The shoulders had dropped, no bowling change seemed to work and the usually chirpy kalyan highlighted the performance with two largely ineffective and expensive overs.. They had bled for 122 runs in 15 overs....

Something special was needed from someone... Defending such a large total we were full of confidence. After three overs we had sent back both their openers and Vaibhav was still to gain in confidence. This is when Atul joins vaibhav in the middle and then mayhem strikes...

Everyone knows Atul shah and his batting, extremely pleasing to the eye and savage power at the same time delivered with the aid of his rippling muscles. His weakness (trade secret), the one full ball that comes in slightly from the middle stump which he somehow manages to play all around most of the time!!!!! But that ball was not to be bowled for some time and what was witnessed in the meanwhile can be described as absolute carnage. He hit the second ball that he faced from dayakar for a six and hit two more lusty blows to the boundary in the same over. The scorecard got a step jump and we had a match to save now. The shah storm was blowing hard and it swept everything in its path. Manzeer's spin, my pace, nagy's variations and Dayakar's line, all took severe beating. Vaibhav in the meanwhile played a gem himself helping his side to some very useful runs. The exciting partnership was broken in a moment of madness, with adrenaline pumping high vaibhav jumped out to a beautiful loopy delivery from manzeer, but couldn't reach the pitch of the ball ,the keeper did the rest behind the stumps. Our captain again came to our rescue.. Kalyan joined atul after another wicket fell in the form of shashank's big swing and miss. Things agained looked in control for their side as kalyan started rotating the strike beautifully to atul. Atul in the meanwhile was still in devastating form, but then the "Ball" was bowled. It took nagy three attempts to get it right, the first two turned out to be low full tosses which atul smoked over square leg's head for maximums. Nagy got third time lucky and delivered the special ball, Atul's brilliant run had finally come to a stump shattering halt and the joyous scenes all around could be mistaken for post-tournament win scenes. With Atul gone we tightned up things, focusing on the new batsmen and getting them all out finally for 107. Kalyan, the lone warrior, was left stranded...

What was thought to be another expected dull chase turned out to be a roller coaster ride and the team with three Rahuls (talk about probability) was left to ponder on the many "what if's". We were effectively through to the finals (atleast we thought we did. mistake???) and Kalyan's side was effectively knocked out, but they still held the key in deciding who the finalists should be. This was without doubt the match of the tournament.

We had another game, time to test our bench strength in what should have been a dead rubber. With one side knocked out will digant's side rise up and silence the mighty Cartmen (Chandu's side, more on this later..)!!!

Game 2 (Manzeer v/s Digant). When Batting fails..

In Digant we had a talented left-handed batsman, who incidentally is the youngest player in Logan. Captaining in his first major assignment, we were not sure what to expect. In contrast we had Manzeer, whom I have known for more than 2 years now. Manzeer takes preparation to another level, the batting order, fielding positions and player roles were clearly defined before the tournament. While other teams were testing their new players in the match itself, my captain(manzeer) had already taken a skill test and assigned duties.

As written in the previous post manzeer's team was considered to be the second strongest of the four. They had good batsmen in Nagendra(Nagy), Aditya, Ketan, Manzeer himself and the bowling too looked in great health with the discovery of another new talent Dayakar. Can utah state's best bowler Sandeep and the wily varma contain this lineup was the question on everyone's mind !!!

But it was not to be a batsman's day, batting first Digant's side could manage only 53 runs in 15 overs while losing 8 wickets in the process. Nagy was chokingly accurate giving nothing away in his 4 overs and Dayakar and Manzeer kept the pressure and variation from the other end. The collapse could be attributed to lack of confidence and match practice which led to pathetic shot selection from most of the batsmen, I would love to take credit for the 4 wickets that I took, but deep down I have to admit that not all were great deliveries..

Defending 54 on a concrete pitch looked impossible, but the match was brought to life by some spirited bowling from Digant's bowlers. Our formidable batting order folded like a pack of cards. Prateek, the boy from Meerut was another success story with his brand of fastish off-spin. In the end 53 was just not enough runs as we won the match in the 14th over. Not an ideal start, but we took the positives (our bowling) from the match and the all important points from the win....

Expected things had happened as expected and unexpected things lie ahead of all of us as hoped..

Game 1 (Chandu v/s Kalyan). Slow begining...

On paper, to the regulars chandu's and manzeer's teams look the strongest. The results suggested cricket is very predictable (wonder how the betting industry survives). Game 1 was Chandu vs Kalyan, chandu's side were weakened by the absence of Sekar, their premier fast bowler. Kalyan's side was yet to discover its confidence. The result was expected with Kalyan's side batting first managing only 68 runs in the alloted 16 overs and in the process losing 9 wickets. Alok datar was the top scorer with 12 runs and the rest of the batsmen scored in single digits. The bowling attack was led by Chandu and Poorna.

Before we talk about the chase, the emergence of two players needs to be discussed. Vaibhav from kalyan's side and Nachiket on chandu's.. Vaibhav was a surprise as his presence in Logan's cricketing circle had been a closely guarded secret, his fleeting presence could only be found in his lab. He did not play for long but showed enough promise to claim a higher position in the batting order. Any bowler would be proud of a statistic of 3 overs and 3 runs, lest a player making his debut in an alien land playing with a bunch of strangers. Nachiket, the boy from Maharastra made an instant impact with his accurate bowling and disconcerting bounce. We are going to see a lot from these two as the tournament progresses...

Chandu's side chased the total without any hiccups in 15 overs, with Shanti and Asif scoring the bulk of the runs. Karthik and Chandu played a steady hand towards the end to take their teams home. The bowling attack looked toothless and even the warne like variations of Kalyan could not save them from a certain defeat. One of the stronger teams had lived up to its pre-tournament billing. All eyes were on Manzeer now....

Teams....

The four captains this year are: Kalyan, Chandrasekhar, Manzeer and Digant. Four contrasting personalities which reflected in their team's performances. The controversial team selection was done in the presence of all the captains and many of the regular players. All players were divided into unchangeables(UCH) and changeables(CH). There were 20 players in the unchangeables and the rest were changeables, the basis being players who will not be allowed to change sides during the tournament. The rest, which included the freshers of 2009 and also guys whose presence was doubtful for the entire duration of the tournaments were categorized as the changeables. Every team consisted of 5 UCHs one captain and rest CHs. The UCHs were divided keeping in mind the preference of the captains and the balance of the sides. CHs were alloted through random selection to remove any bias towards any particular individual or team. The final teams were:

Team 1	Team 2	Team 3	Team 4
Chandu(c)	Digant(c)	Kalyan(c)	Manzeer(c)
Sekar	Sandeep B	Alok Datar	Swadesh
Karthik	Varma	Atul	Nagendra
Shanti	Santosh	Shashank	Aditya Jain
Harish	Morab	Gade	Ameya
Yogi	Alok Ameya	Rahul Jain	Dayakar
Asif	Aswani	Grandhi	Praveen
Poorna	Hema Swaroop	Nagarjuna	Saurabh
Hemang	Prateek	Mangalam	Sushant
Sandeep G	Harshavardan	Shravan	Ketan
Vamsi	Nitin	Udara	Ram Sudheer

The tournament was scheduled to begin from 12th of august..

Schedule:-----

Wednesday:(08/12/009)

TIME:-- 5:00 pm - 8:00 pm. Team 1 (Chandu) x Team 3 (Kalyan), Umpires: Swadesh and Digant

Thursday: (08/13/009)
TIME:--5:00 pm - 8:00 pm. Team 2 (Digant) x Team 4 (Manzeer), Umpires: Chandu and Kalyan

Friday: (08/14/009)
TIME:-- 5:00 pm -8:00 pm. Team 3 (Kalyan) x Team 4 (Manzeer), Umpires: Varma and Chandu

Saturday: (08/15/009)

TIME:-- 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm. Team 1 (Chandu) x Team 4 (Manzeer), Umpires: Digant and Varma

TIME:-- 4:30 pm - 7:30 pm. Team 2 (Digant) x Team 3 (Kalyan), Umpires: Swadesh and Chandu

Sunday: (08/16/009)

TIME:-- 12:01 pm-3:00 pm. Team 1 (Chandu) x Team 2(Digant), Umpires: Swadesh and Kalyan

TIME:-- 3:30 pm - 8:pm (most probably) Finals - (Between the top two teams from first round)

Annual Fall USU-ISA Cricket Tournament (History and Preparations..)

The two major cricketing events that were held last year were the Fall and Indoor Tournaments. Both the events were major successes and we are proud of that. But this post is about the Fall tournament(which has already started, other posts discussing matches will be posted soon).

A bit of history always helps....Crickets tournaments were held in Utah state long before the present batch of students arrived in the US, but due to some reasons unknown to us (we can speculate that one batch suddenly graduated leaving a void and the remaining found other games to their liking) there was no large scale organized events for the past two years(2006-07).

In august of 2008 the visionaries of apts. near an indian restaurant in Logan popularly known as 989 and other fellow cricket addicts thought of organizing a full fledged tournament. It would be cruel not to be able to write down the contributions of all the players of last year's event, but still a few deserve speacial mention for their dedicated efforts like Manzeer, Chandu, Jayashankar, Varma, Asif... and many other.

We got support and funds from the very helpful Indian Students Association (ISA), all the matches were played at USU quad and it was a big success with Captain Shanti Swaroop's Savages winning the Fall-2008 trophy by defeating the all conquering Juggernauts captained by Jayshankar. Start of fall always brings with it the added excitement of another year at school and to an extent another chance to be the cricketing champions for a year.

989 is still the hotspot for cricketing discussions and talent pool this year. Four captains have volunteered to lead, all equally eager to get the best out of themselves and to inspire their teams to win the coveted trophy. This year's event will again be played at Quad with hard tennis balls. The tournament format remains the same with 4 teams playing each other in the first round and the best two teams locking horns in the final. The team selection procedure, match result and discussions will follow soon... Keep reading....

Why Blog about cricket ?????

There are many reasons why we are starting this blog to write about cricket related stuff happening at Utah state university, but the most important one being, blogging does not hurt your wallet..... The other equally important reason is that, maintaining a website is a lot tougher than writing a few lines in a blog. But that does not mean that we did not try, our friend Sashi Reddy who played with us for a long time, took the pain to maintain a website (aggiecricket...) for one year. But he has found a job and has relocated, blogging seems like a good alternative, considering the fact that we would probably be writing during the few tournaments that the cricket club at Utah state University organizes. Interesting matches at our various breeding grounds(read parking lots, like 989, snowcrest....) will probably be discussed too. Let us hope it is a success and the posts and comments start pouring in....