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....