Day/Night match at Koga, Ibaraki Pref.

 By Sidde Raju

      As this is the first match happening under lights, Engineers reached the new Koga ground at 3:00PM with strong winds still blowing from the previous night. The stadium ground looked excellent, full of grass except for the corner for the baseball pitching, had a gallery that can accommodate around 100 spectators, a dressing room each for both teams, flood lights available for nominal fees, which the Engineers made use of, having the match played from 3pm to 9pm. The Tigers arrived after prowling the city at 4:00PM, and quickly found the incompatibility between the mat and the ground soil. After some brainstorming sessions, our curator Dinesh took the lead in installing the pitch on new ground. Coin has been tossed after a delay of an hour, the Tiger’s leader called the wrong side of the coin, which leads to engineer’s openers to walk towards the pitch with bat. Cool headed Masood opened the innings with veteran opener Santosh. Things went good until Masood got out.

     Dinesh walked in as a replacement, and the Engineer’s camp looked comfortable as the last years leading run scorer took the charge of rolling the score card. But soon he returned after an LBW decision. On the other side, Santosh keep ticking the score. The new man Kushal looked pretty comfortable, but soon got run out. Raju walked in as a replacement to him. By this time the score looked 56/5, a situation the Engineers are quite familiar with. The young blood and the new vice captain, Anurag Singh, walked in style, as the back ground voices echoed as “GUYS DON’T LET THE LAST YEAR’S KCL STITATION REPAT AGAIN”. They kept up their word, after a partnership of 30 runs Raju fell to an unintended yorker. By this time Anurag gave full thrust to the score card. The captain Sanjeeb joined him and made some valuable runs before returning back after a caught and bowled chance. Bikash replaced him in order to give some strong support to Anurag, as he is one of the stake holder in high score partnerships. This time the partnership didn’t go good. After few runs contribution, Anurag fell in the process of accelerating the score as the innings reaching the final phase. Engineers scored 133 runs in 24 overs in very unplayable conditions.

     Knowing very well that any score above 120 will be difficult for the Tigers to chase Engineers took to field after a few minutes break in order to hunt down the 134 in 27 overs. Though the figures looks achievable, the path towards that looks not that easy at the end. The valuable weapon in our arsenal, with a perfect text book bowling action (Rajeesh) started the bowling attack, the very first one went like a rocket juts like on Koiwa pitch, which we haven’t seen in our day’s play until then. According to strategy, along with our veteran seam bowler Biju the pair has to put the Tigers on back foot. Biju got the break through when he had Tigers opener Anil caught in front of the wicket in the 2nd over. A lots of convincing shouts turned out against Rajeesh though. After encouraging new talented players with the bowl, the captain thought its time to bring in Anurag. The real down fall started when the ball came in to the hands of Dinesh. He cleaned up the Tiger’s middle order taking 4 wickets in 4 overs, one in each over. After Dinesh and Raju restricted the Tigers from scoring in a long stretch of 12 overs, the asking rate was too much for the Tigers and they folded up soon with Rajeesh, Anurag and Kushal cleaning up the rest of the list and recorded the first win of this season just before the lights gone off at 21:00hrs. Key Points: 1. Ground is great. Playing cricket under lights is amazing, thanks to all stake holders in this initiation.

     A flicx pitch may make it more interesting.  Return driving to Tokyo took just one hour. 2. Though the playing conditions in the first half are unplayable, the batsmen managed to score 133. Anurag and Santhosh contributions were impressive. 3. Bowling department: bowlers did good job in restricting the tigers. 4. Ground fielding is good, but we managed to miss few catches which my go costly in other situations. [As we all know this is a well known and well repeated statement :)]

Brief scores: IECC 133 (24 overs). S Ghadge 19 I Tigers:  104 (27 overs). D Singh 4/18

Newsletter

March 11, 2010                                                                                              Issue #105

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

Index

• Japanese season to kick start
• The fine print
• Asia & EAP news –
• Beer for Books celebrates 1st anniversary
• Indian Engineers’ Japan Cricket Rating – New results
• IECC poll results
• Reader’s corner
• Best of the web
• Snippet of the month
• Trivial facts from our Archives

Japanese season to kick start

The unpredictable weather these days notwithstanding the Japanese cricket season and so many other summer sports will kick start a new season with friendly warm up matches before they get on to serious business. As part of the warm up process, the Tokyo Giants along with some other Pakistani community organisations, is organising a Hanami (Cherry Blossom viewing) at Ueno Park on March 27-28. Former Pakistan cricketer Saeed Anwar is likely to grace the occasion along with many other artists from Pakistan.

This month will also see the final of the KCL T-20 tournament, which could not be held last year. The JPY 100,000 winner-takes-all tournament will see the unlikely heros Shizuoka Kytes taking on Nagoya, the initiator of the tournament. Khan Enterprises Inc., owned by Nagoya’s skipper Saqib Khan is the primary sponsor of the tournament. Saeed Anwar is expected to attend the final before he returns to Pakistan.

Neil Harrison to organise an Umpiring Seminar

Japan’s international umpire Neil Harrison will hold a seminar on one of the most challenging issues plaguing the Japanese cricket – you guessed it right! – umpiring. Lack of quality umpires and occasional refusal by players to accept umpire’s decisions (some genuine and some others outright refusal) have been a bane of the sport in Japan. The seminar, to be held jointly for KCL and JCA teams on Sunday March 14 in Tokyo, will cover general umpiring topics, playing conditions and detailed information on umpiring signals, No Balls, Wides, LBW etc.

Indian Engineers on Twitter

Well, the Engineers can’t be away from latest technology for too long. Follow the Engineers at http://twitter.com/ieccjapan/ for live match updates and other cricket updates.

The Fine Print

A team manager’s report on Pakistan’s disastrous tour of Australia blamed defensive captaincy by Mohammad Yousuf and discipline problems for the debacle. The report mentioned two separate incidents when Yousuf disputed his axing from the team. On the first occasion, Yousuf argued with the coach after he was dropped from the team for the third One-Day International against New Zealand on poor fielding. The other incident occurred before the fifth and final One-day against Australia when Yousuf initially withdrew but wanted to play later. The report also mentioned a heated argument between pacemen Umar Gul and Mohammad Aamir during the second Test in Wellington. In an another incident of ill-discipline, young batsman Umar Akmal was blamed for giving a media interview without the manager’s permission before the Hobart Test when he was undergoing examination for apparent back strain.
##

Senior Pakistan batsman Mohammad Yousuf has accused his team mate, Shoaib Malik, of disrupting team unity. “Nasim Ashraf (former Pakistan Cricket Board chairman) made a big mistake by making Shoaib Malik the captain,” Yousuf said. “It was during his captaincy that the culture of groups within a team took root and respect for senior players fell. Two or three players are spoiling things in the team and I will reveal their names in the next few days.”

Comment: Yousuf hasn’t revealed any names yet..
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Police in Jamaica recovered some of Brian Lara’s stolen items from the house of woman who was acquainted with one of Lara’s close friends. Lara’s home was burgled while he was asleep. The report said the police seized more than 40 bottles of premium liquor, jewelry and four-autographed cricket bats from the woman’s home. Police said that nearly TT$500,000 (US$83,300) in various currencies, and half a million dollars in jewellery, the honorary Order of Australia, which was given to him by Australia Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, were in the safe which was stolen from Lara’s house.

Comment: Asleep while a safe is removed from home and not noticed? Interesting..
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In a sensational disclosure, a Bengali daily on Saturday claimed that the Indian team sent Sachin Tendulkar with a request to Eden Gardens curator Prabir Mukherjee that he should shave the grass off the pitch for the second cricket Test between India and South Africa, starting Sunday, but it was politely turned down. The veteran curator, however, categorically denied meeting Tendulkar.
###

Contradicting his former captain Ian Chappell’s statement, Australian pace bowling great Dennis Lillee said on Friday that there was no reason why India cannot sustain their numero uno Test status. “I don’t agree with Ian Chappel’s that India cannot sustain their number one status in Test cricket,” Lillee told reporters. “I don’t see a reason why India can’t sustain their position. At the moment India has a balanced attack. Sometimes it is not all about out and out fast bowling. Australia also lacks a genuine tearaway pacers.” he said. Chappell had said recently said that it is unlikely that India will sustain their number one Test status as they quality bowling attack and batting alone cannot deliver the goods for them for a longer period.
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New Zealand cricketers’ involvement in the Indian Premier League is in serious doubt after their players association recommended a pull out from the tournament, which starts on March 12. The highly anticipated report commissioned by the New Zealand, Australian, English and South African players unions also cast doubt on the ability of local authorities to deliver security
management plans.
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Source: Various web and print media

Asia & EAP News

Neil Harrison tops list

Neil Harrison of Japan ranked first in the 2010 EAP Umpires Panel following a review and selection of the EAP Umpires Panel (UP) and Supplementary Umpires Panel (SUP). Chris Thurgate, another umpire from Japan, ranked second in the Supplementary Umpires Panel. The Rankings have been done in consultation between the RUC and the RDO taking into account the observations, reports and feedback from tournaments. It may be recalled that Harrison was selected as an umpire in the recently concluded World Cricket League Division 5 in Nepal.

ICC Development Programme Annual Awards 2009

Namibia’s cricket development programme took the top prize of Best Overall Cricket Development Programme in the Pepsi ICC Development Programme 2009 while EAP’s PNG took the Best Cricket Promotion and Marketing Programme award.

Beer for Books celebrates 1st anniversary

Our readers may recall that Indian Engineers Cricket Club was the 1st organisation to lend their support to Beer for Books (http://www.beersforbooks.org/), an idea conceived and put into action by Gary Bremermann, by which for every drink you order during an event 100yen will be donated to Room to Read(http://www.roomtoread.org/) that helps children in the third world countries to buy books and build schools and libraries. Room to Read was founded by former Microsoft employee, John Wood.

Beer for Books recently celebrated their first anniversary in Tokyo. Here is a report by its founder Gary Bremermann:

On March 3rd , Beers for Books, an idea that was born one short year ago and was supported from its very early stages by the IECC, celebrated its 1st anniversary with a big party at Tokyo’s Happo-en. Despite it being a Wednesday night, over 600 people showed up and the event created over 6000 books for children in 7 countries, including India.

Speaking of India, a wonderful slide show was presented by professional photographer Ms. Paula Waltz, who shared her photos of Room to Read-supported schools in India, so the attendees could see the power of early childhood literacy education in action. The founder of Room to Read, Mr. John Wood, was at the event and made a brief presentation to mark both the 1 year mark of Beers for Books and also the 10 year mark for the Room to Read organization, which has impacted over 4.1 million children in 9 countries to date by building 1,129 schools, 9.196 libraries, and providing 8,725 girls’ scholarships.

The Beers for Books (B4B) fundraising program which started here in Tokyo has since spread to 2 more countries (U.S., Australia) and will soon launch in Singapore and London with more countries coming on line soon. In Japan, there have been events in 12 prefectures so far with a target of reaching all 47 prefectures by the end of 2010. After last week’s event, B4B has passed the 45,000 book mark in its first year and aims to significantly increase this number over the next year. Room to Read is opening new libraries in Asia and Africa at a pace of about one every 4 ½ hours (faster than Starbucks!) so there are lots of libraries to fill with lots of books. If you all have any ideas for helping to grow this idea your support is very welcome.

Links:
Room to Read – http://www.roomtoread.org/
Beer for Books- http://www.beersforbooks.org/
Gary Bremermann – gary@robertleonard.jp

Indian Engineers’ Japan Cricket Rating – New results

Results as of February 28:

We have performed the annual ritual! We have purged the list based on the number games each club played. In order not to give undue weightage of the past performance to ranking process we take only the previous and current season’s performance while calculating the ranking order. Additionally, we consider only those clubs that have played or likely to play at least 5 matches over the two seasons. Thus, we have removed the 2008 records from the ranking process and moved those that have played less than 5 matches to the bottom of the list.

Here is the latest top 10(last month’s ranking in brackets):

1 Tokyo Giants (1)
2 Tokyo Wombats (2)
3 Lalazar (6)
4 Wyverns (4)
5 Serendib (6)
6 MAX (8)
7 Indian Engineers (8)
8 Shizuoka Kytes (12)
9 Adore (10)
9 Nagoya (3)
10 Paddy Foleys (13)

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.

Readers’ Corner

IECC Poll results

Here is the last poll result:

Do you think the USA is ready for T-20?

Yes         29%
No          71%
Can’t say 0%

Take the new poll:

Do you think the the PCB took the right decision in punishing its players?

Visit our home page today to vote!

Best of the Web

Ball pocketted by Jonathan Trott in a county game

Indian TV actress Neena Gupta talks about her relationship with the West Indian great Sir Vivian Richards

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 you want the ball to turn square from day one, why do you need a curator?” – the curator of the Eden Gardens after claiming that the BCCI asked him to prepare a turner for the second Test against RSA.

Trivial facts (from our Archives)

A total of 37 hat-tricks have been registered in Test cricket as of 2009.

That’s all in this edition ! !