Month: June 2008

Issue #86 KCL Launches New Website

Newsletter


June 12, 2008                                                                                              Issue #86

Hello and welcome to this edition of the I.E.C.C. Newsletter.

Index

  • KCL Launches New Website
  • The Fine Print
  • Japan continues to struggle to find its place
  • ICC EAP News –
  • Indian Engineers’ Japan Cricket Rating – New results
  • IECC Poll results
  • Best of the web
  • Snippet of the Month
  • Trivial facts from our Archives

 

KCL Launches New Website

The Kanto Cricket League launched a full fledged cricket website late last month. The site is dynamic with a backend database that gives the administrator complete freedom to manage the site without requiring him to know any html programming. Different administrative modules help the administrator to update the schedules, results, points, news etc. In addition, the site can support multiple tournaments. Visit the new site athttp://www.cricketjapan.org.

In the tournament, the YC&AC is continuing its dream run with 3 wins out of the 4 matches and leading the table in Group A with an almost unassailable 14 points. While many teams in Group A are close to finish all their league matches, some teams in Group B are yet to start their KCL season(something for the scheduler!). Favourites Al Karam has the maximum number of points in Group B, having won both their matches.

For Latest results are available here.

The Fine Print

Indian pacer Praveen Kumar landed up in police custody after a drunken brawl with a doctor. The doctor claimed that Praveen also abused him and was drunk at the time of the incident.The matter was settled later with Kumar apologising for his behaviour.
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Umpire Simon Taufel has joined a growing list of umpires complaining the constant travel and being away from the family. He is said to be negotiating with the ICC about his new contract. “I am always looking for new opportunities, not necessarily umpiring”, said Taufel.
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A day after Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan was barred entry to his team’s dressing room by the ICC’s Anti-corruption Unit, the Indian Premier League authorities decided to issue an all-area accreditation badge to one member of each of the eight team franchisees.

Comment: Money talks!
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The media has been reporting that all is not well between the Kolkata Knight Riders owner and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and KKR’s skipper Sourav Ganguly. One of the things that reportedly angered Ganguly was that coach John Buchanan was given more powers than the captain himself and then Shah Rukh announced that the coach will take all the decisions for the team next year onwards.

Comment: Ah, it is Ganguly again..
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Snap polls suggest that over 24 million watched the nail-biting final, though industry experts say that this is a conservative estimate and the numbers could be much higher. Over 20 million people watched the Rajasthan Royals vs Delhi Daredevils while the second semi-final between Chennai Super Kings and Kings XI Punjab drew an audience of 19 million. Compare this with the World Cup cricket ODI final which was simulcast on SAB, Set Max and DoorDarshan of India and drew in 32.8 million people while the T20 final-in which India played and won-attracted an audience reach of 48 million.
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Following a series of betting and fixing scandals and investigations in various professional sports, including
cricket, soccer and tennis the IOC is setting up a special unit to check for suspicious betting patterns during the Beijing Games.
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Source: Various web and print media.

ICC World Cricket League – Japan continues to struggle to find its place

After taking advantage of the most talented cricket tournament in Japan to get their own competition running and then deciding that they have nothing to do with it, after being instigated by a few misguided individuals, the JCA’s cricket team continues to struggle in the international arena with performances that have nothing to write home about.

In the ICC World Cricket League being held in Jersey, Japan is placed 2nd from bottom on the points table in Group B with just 2 points from 4 matches (2 loss, 1 tie, 1 washout). Even Botswana in the same group and Mozambique in Group A, with probably having less infrastructure and support structure than Japan has, have managed to eke out a win each. In the league stage, where it all mattered,
only once Japan managed to go past 100 runs, a match they managed tie with Bahamas. Japan, however, can take heart in Takuro Hagihara’s individual brilliance against Afghanistan(5/25) in a losing cause(87 all out in 40.2 overs) and a consolation win against Vanuatu for the 9th place play-off semi-final(a series of matches held for classification purpose and has no bearing on the outcome of the
tournament).

In the final, Afghanistan(81/8) clinched the title by defeating the hosts, Jersey(80) in a low scoring match. Score card: http://content-eap.cricinfo.com/wcl/engine/match/349864.html. The World Cricket League is 5-division designed to provide a qualification route into the ICC World Cup Qualifier matches. The competition has a promotion and relegation system between them. Japan is currently placed at the bottom league(Division 5) along with Afghanistan, Bahamas, Botswana, Germany, Jersey, Mozambique, Nepal, Norway, Singapore, USA.

With the JCA’s intriguing selection criteria for the national team, which ignores a sizably large and talented pool of cricketers resulting in undeserving individuals being selected in the national team, and a criminal wastage of already paltry ground resources, the results of this kind come as no surprise. What the JCA doesn’t realise, perhaps, is that these policies will only continue to alienate them more and more from the rest of the cricketing community and make them look like they are out of touch with the reality. Consider this for e.g., JCA’s ground usage fees rules require a team to cough up to 30,000 yen per match (60,000yen in total) to use their ground in the Fuji city, about 100km away from Tokyo. This is in addition to the gas and toll charges a team has to spend to travel from Tokyo. While it is right to charge the money required for the maintenance of the ground, an undesired, but not unexpected, result of this high charges is that the ground lies unused on many weekends, the latest instance being June 7-8 weekend. Another example is that when a newly formed team approached the JCA early this year to join in their competition, they were refused entry for no apparent reason. The KCL, on the other hand, accepted the new team with open arms, reflecting a fundamentally different attitudes by the game’s governing body in Japan towards the development of the game in the country. This reflects poorly on the management of the JCA and raises questions on the effectiveness of their policies and their insistence to interact with only a select group of individuals and players, which directly translates to poor results for the national team. May be the JCA is waiting for a Japanese Allen Stanford.

ICC EAP News

+ New Zealand Provincial Associations to assist Samoa and Tonga +

Two EAP Samoa and Tonga, have entered into partnership with two Provincial Associations of New Zealand, Auckland Cricket Association and Canterbury Cricket Association. Through the partnership program, Provincial Associations provide cricket development expertise to EAP countries across a range of levels from community participation to high performance. The partnership program was established in 2002 and continues to highlight the role of New Zealand cricket in the development of the sport globally, and in particular, within the emerging countries of the EAP region.

+ Philippine 6’s +

The inaugural Philippine 6’s tournament held in March this year saw thirteen teams from across the EAP region participating. The event was put together through a partnership between Nomads Cricket (chaired by William Bailey) and the Asian Cricket Sixes Tour (chaired by Michael “Cat” Maher) and was the result of more than a year of planning. The big story of the tournament was the appearance of the Korean Crusaders, a side consisting entirely of Korean Nationals. The organisers believe that this was the first ever all-Korean side to play international cricket. In the final, Shanghai Dragons beat Manila Nomads by 12 runs.

Indian Engineers’ Japan Cricket Rating – New results

Results as of May 31:

There were a few changes in the ranking last month based on the few friendly matches played in March.

Here is the list of the top 10 teams(last month’s ranking in brackets):

1 Tokyo Giants (1)
2 Osaka Tigers (2)
3 Tokyo Wombats (8)
4 Serendip (5)
5 Kansai Fighters (7)
6 YC&AC (3)
7 KRAC (9)
8 Al Karam (8)
9 Wyverns (4)
10 MAX (6)

See the full list here.

IECC Poll results

Here is the last poll result:

Judging by the media coverage IPL receives, do you think IPL has long term prospects or will it be short-lived?

Long term prospects – 67%
Short life – 33%
Can’t say – 0%

Take the new poll:

Do you support Stanford’s winner takes all and loser gets nothing approach in Stanford 20/20?

Visit our home page today to vote!

Readers’ Corner

 

Best of the Web

Washington Post’s take on Redskins Cheerleaders for the IPL

Snippets of the Month

Note: Beginning the Issue #39 (May 6, ’04), we bring you some interesting snippets from the cricket world, to celebrate the fourth anniversary this Newsletter and first anniversary of our popular “Trivial Facts” series. The same will be published on the front page of our website too.

“If Warne was Napoleon, India was his Waterloo” – a columnist in the Indian Express.

Trivial facts (from our Archives)

1. Former India opener Raman Lamba died during a cricket match. During a club match in Bangladesh, Lamba was hit on the temple
fielding at short leg. He walked off the field, spat blood, suffered concussion and died later on the same day.

2. In ODIs, Sachin Tendulkar has earned the maximum no. of Man of the Match awards(56) and in Tests Jacques Kallis(19).

That’s all in this edition!

Friends grounded

Make-shift Engineers show their might

 By Sandeep Thakker

      What began as a cloudy Sunday morning at Edogawa, eased out into a good day and culminated in an interesting finish with a six of the last ball. The match was conceived only 2 days earlier and Engineers had a tough time putting up a decent team. In the end captain and president’s hard work bore fruit and an eleven were gobbled together on Saturday less than 24 hours before the match. Early morning drizzles caused the Friends captain to call off the match but a determined Engineers skipper was able to persuade the Friends to the ground. With 35 overs a side and the match starting at 12 noon, it was expected to be a tough fight but not without its ups and downs. Cleverly working out a winning strategy, the Engineers captain Sanjeeb Sahoo decided to bowl first against one of the strongest teams in Japan and KCL finalists for the last two years running.

     Having unknown entities in the side did not deter the skipper to take that courageous decision. Biju and Sangan opened the bowling for the Engineers against Friends’ usual opening pair of Asad and Saad. The script somehow did not have an auspicious beginning with the new comer Javed at long-off floored a skier in the 5th over off Saad, with Biju being the victim, robbing the Engineers of an early break-through. Engineers were quick to realise that there were more people with grease in their hands on the field as more than half-a-dozen catches went begging especially huge hits around the long off region. In spite of those initial hiccups, with fiery pace that Anurag generated Friends batsmen found it hard to handle the bowling. Soon the wheels started rolling and wickets began to tumble. With Ritesh on the other end not giving anything away the two pacers along with Biju gave the opposition much to think about and by the half way half way mark(17 overs), half of the batsmen were back in the hut with the score reading 79/5. But there was one more batsman the Engineers would have liked to see the back of earlier. Aamir Ali. The beneficiary of most of the dropped catches.

     Just when the Friends thought they had their feet in, came a good throw from point to the ‘keeper and with both the batsman stranded in the middle of the pitch the stumps were rattled resulting in a run out. But strangely enough, the decision went to the batsman’s favor, as the square leg umpire wasn’t convinced that the bails were taken off with the ball in hand. The exasperated Engineers continued without much fuss for the sake of the friendly game and maintained the discipline. It was as if one was inspiring the other and the good work done by Anurag and Ritesh were continued by Partha and Sanjeeb.

     On the whole the bowling appeared good, barring one over that went beyond double digits owing to a couple of high catches being dropped, butter fingers is what they say :-). Aamir, the captain coming lower down saved the day for Friends with some lusty hitting to finish with 69 and was the last man dismissed. Friends thus folded up at 173 well within 34 overs owing to some decent bowling performance by the Engineers, with Anurag being the chief destructor(4/17). The script could not have been better for the Engineers with Friends being quite contrast to the Engineers’ beginning in terms of discipline in bowling department. With at least a few wides in each over the task became easier for the Engineers and with a fluent 79 run opening partnership there was little to worry for the Engineers. After the fall of the first wicket Friends sniffed a chance and would have thought they would be able to cave their way back in whereas what happened was a total contrast.

    A hurricane by the name of Javed Jamadar came their way and they were swept off their feet with some lusty hitting. Its what pinch hitters are supposed to do, but none expected that boundaries would be cleared with such ease by this surprise package and last minute fill-in. Two of his hits landed in the river, prompting even the bowler to applaud. In fact even the Engineers did not expect this storm to hit the ground :). Though the Friends managed to get a couple of wickets but by the time they came it was too late for the Friends. In the end, an unfinished partnership of 49 between Raju and Sandeep saw Engineers home with Raju hitting a the winning runs by a six.

Brief scores: Friends: 173 (33.4ov.). Aamir Ali 69, A Singh 4/17 IECC: 174/4 . S Ghadge 39*, S Raju 30*.