Newsletter
January 8, 2009 Issue #92
Hello and welcome to this edition of the I.E.C.C. Newsletter.
Index
- Happy New Year
- The Fine Print
- Asia & EAP News –
- Indian Engineers’ Japan Cricket Rating – New results
- IECC Poll results
- US T20 Cricket Tournament
- Best of the web
- Snippet of the Month
- Trivial facts from our Archives
Happy New Year
We wish our readers a very Happy New Year and an exciting and competitive season in 2009.
This Newsletter will celebrate the 100th issue this year. We are thankful for the support and continued feedback our readers provide, without which we could not have survived. Currently we have more than 300 subscribers and plenty of online readers. Your continued feedback and opinion are always welcome.
Kansai cricket:
Despite our best efforts we are unable to contact Kansai cricket to know the results down there, so any of the readers have any links to Kansai cricket, please contact us so that we can update the rest.
The Fine Print
Noting that Ricky Ponting was still setting fields to suit retired legends Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, former South African batting great Barry Richards advised the Australian captain to ‘dramatically change’ his thinking on placements for the current lot. “His thinking is still about setting fields for McGrath and Warne and he has not got the cattle to do that,” Richards said.
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England skipper Kevin Pietersen has rubbed salt on Ricky Ponting’s wounds, claiming that Australia’s drubbing at the hands of South Africa in the first Test in Perth brought a smile in his face. “When I was batting I saw on the scoreboard South Africa had won – and it made me chuckle a little bit,” he was quoted as saying in ‘The Sun’.
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To facilitate his travel to China as a cricket ambassador,Pakistan Interior Ministry has decided to issue a blue diplomatic passport to newly-appointed Cricket Board Director-General Javed Miandad. “Miandad is a big name and respected figure in Pakistan and his role as cricket ambassador to China will help further cement ties between both the countries,” an interior ministry official said.
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In a unique response to terror attacks on the Chabad Centre in Mumbai, three businessmen from Los Angeles have decided to donate USD 125,000 to enable a Jewish cricket team from India to participate in the 18th Maccabiah Games in Israel which attracts Jewish athletes from all over the world, a media report said. “This is our answer to the murderous rampage against Indian and Israeli citizens,” Steve Soboroff, founder of the ‘Committee of 18’ to support and publicise the Maccabiah games was quoted by ‘The Jewish Journal’ as saying. In addition to cricket, consisting mainly of 18-year-old players, Indian athletes will also compete in badminton and table tennis at the games. The games open on July 13 next year. The Committee of 18 consists of people from Los Angeles who are leaders in entertainment, media, marketing and business fields.
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The war-torn Afghanistan, known across the globe for its mujahideen, will move a step closer to qualifying for the 2011 Cricket World Cup when they fly out to Argentina this month, where first or second place in the International Cricket Council league and division three brings qualification for the World Cup qualifiers in South Africa in April. “I think, God willing, we stand a good chance,” Allah Dad Noore, the President of the country’s cricket federation and the father of Afghan cricket, was quoted as saying by The Daily Telegraph of U.K. Cricket was brought to Afghanistan by returning refugees from Pakistan from the Russian occupation two decades ago. The ruling Taliban at that time refused to accept cricket as a national game but relented after a senior Taliban official visited a provincial tournament and saw the support for the game. Cricket matches now command large crowds and Jalalabad city alone has 66 clubs.
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The Guardian newspaper’s ‘World Test XI of the Year’ (2008) did not include a single Australian. “This is brilliant; we do not really know which is the best team in the world. For a decade, it has been Australia and there has been nothing to argue about. Now there are three contenders as India and South Africa challenge Australia’s supremacy,” said former England all-rounder Vic Marks, who prepared the list. Vic Marks’ select XI contained six Indians, three South Africans and two Englishmen – Grame Smith (c), Virender Sehwag, Kevin Pietersen, Sachin Tendulkar, A B De Villiers, Andrew Flintoff, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Ishant Sharma, Dale Steyn.
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Kevin Pietersen’s relationship with England coach Peter Moores was doomed from the very start as the skipper respects only South African coaches or those who have been world class players, claims his former county team Nottinghamshire’s Director of Cricket Mick Newell.
“Ideally for Kevin, the coach would be South African or someone who was once a world-class cricketer,” Newell told ‘Sportsmail’.
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Source: Various web and print media
Asia & EAP News
Thailand to host ACC Trophy Challenge 2009
Starting from the 12th of January, Thailand will once again be buzzing with cricket as Chiang Mai plays host to the inaugural ACC Trophy
Challenge. Last year for the first time ACC decided to host the seventh edition of the ACC Trophy in two legs. The first leg (ACC Trophy Elite) held recently in Malaysia saw both Saudi Arabia and Qatar being relegated to the Challenge level thereby making room for the promotion of the ACC Trophy Challenge finalist. The eight teams will be split into two groups of four for the initial round robin stage, with the top two teams from each group proceeding to the semi finals. Oman starts the tournament as favorites with Bhutan, Maldives and Thailand vying for the cup.
Group ‘A’: Oman, Bhutan, Brunei, Myanmar
Group ‘B’: Thailand, Maldives, Iran, China.
Indian Engineers’ Japan Cricket Rating – New results
Results as of December 31:
Before you raise your eyebrows, let us tell you that the Rating table has been re-ranked. Basically, beginning of every year we remove the data that is two years old. So in this case we removed the data of 2007 season and the current ranking is now based on 2008 results only. As the season 2009 progresses, the results get added and in January 2010, the 2008 data will get dropped and so on. This is to remove undue weightage on the historical data and make the ranking based more on the current status/strength of each club.
So after removing the 2007 data, we got some interesting results such as Nagoya jumping to the second place and Millennium to 6th place from way down 19th. This happens mostly because of the ratio of their win as well as the bonus points a team accumulates by defeating a higher ranked team or qualifying the knockout stages of any tournament that involves more than three teams. The point system as well the each team’s total points are available at http://www.ieccjapan.com/jcrating.xml
Here is the list of the top 10 teams(last month’s ranking in brackets):
1 Tokyo Giants (1)
2 Nagoya (8)
3 YC&AC (2)
4 Al Karam (6)
4 Wyverns (7)
5 Tokyo Wombats (3)
6 Millennium (19)
7 Serendip (4)
8 Adore (20)
9 Kansai Lions (14)
10 Indian Engineers (16)
See the full list here.
We encourage all teams to send us your result statistics regularly so that your team’s rankings remain as accurate as possible. We are in a position to obtain the results of the official tournament matches on our own but we are looking for the results of the friendly matches.
US T20 Cricket Tournament
Letter from Jeff Miller, Executive Vice President of Operations:
Cricket Council USA is poised to make Cricket history by staging the largest and richest 20/20 Cricket Tournament in North America. The name of the Tournament is THE US T20 CRICKET TOURNAMENT ’09. A total of 48 Cricket Clubs will be competing for $100,000.00 in prize money that will be awarded to the winning Club. The Tournament will be played on April 5-12, 2009 in South Florida, USA. Eight Cricket fields will be utilized during the Tournament. The Semi finals and the Final will be played at the first ever Cricket Stadium in North America located in the Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, Florida. The other matches will be played in the cities of Miramar, Cooper City, Lauderhill and Cricket Council USA’s beautiful Cricket Field in Delray Beach.
Cricket Clubs that have already registered for the Tournament are coming from throughout the United States, Canada, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates (Dubai), US Virgin Islands, West Indies and Sweden. The US T20 Cricket Tournament ’09 promises to be a wonderful CRICKET FESTIVAL with nearly one thousand Cricketers participating and thousands of Cricket fans cheering their favorite Clubs and Cricket players. You and your Organization are cordially invited to participate in the Tournament. Please refer to our website: www.cricketcouncilusa.com
IECC Poll results
Here is the last poll result:
After the battering by Australia, how will New Zealand fare against the West Indies at the home series?
New Zealand will win 75%
New Zealand will lose 25%
Can’t say 0%
Take the new poll:
Is it time for Matthew Hayden to retire?
Visit our home page today to vote!
Readers’ Corner
Editor** We encourage our readers to write back to us with your articles, opinion, feedback and criticism. Feel free to write about anything related to cricket, in Japan or outside.
Best of the Web
Sachin Tendulkar’s first interview (19 January 1989)
Brett Lee on “Rendezvous with Simi Garewal” (Indian TV Show)
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.
“Umpiring is all about seeing the ball and hearing the ball” – Umpire Billy Bowden.
Trivial facts (from our Archives)
1. In 1985-86 series India’s Kapil Dev was denied a glass of water by Allan Border after a shot of his killed a seagull.
2. Former Indian ‘keeper Dilawan Hussain became one of the founding members of PCB.
That’s all in this edition!