Newsletter
October 11, 2001 Issue #15
Hello and welcome to this edition of the IECC Newsletter.
KCL Final postponed
The much awaited KCL final was washed away on October 8th. The match was to be played between the Tokyo Giants and Friends XI. The new date will be announced soon.
Tokyo Giants had defeated the Sri Lankans by 3 wickets in the first semi-final. Sri Lankan Lions 160, Tokyo Giants 162/7. Friends had qualified for the semi-final after trouncing the YC&AC. YC&AC 124, Friends XI 125/4.
In the first play-off for the Division I next year, Shizuoka Kytes(159/8, G. Parsons 6/16) bowled out the British Embassy for 99 (G. Parsons, 49, M. Sharpe, 6/19) thus keeping the jinx of the visiting teams not scoring more than 99 runs against the Kytes this year intact.
The second play-off which was between the Indian Engineers and the Millennium was converted to a 22 over friendly as the Engineers showed up at the ground only at 2 p.m. after getting stuck in a 4 hour traffic jam. The play off is likely be played towards the end of October. Read here the report of this match and an eventful journey.
The following teams have been qualified for the Division I for 2002:
Tokyo Giants, Friends, YC&AC and Sri Lankans (all semi-finalists) and
Shizuoka Kytes (winner of the first play-off)
Winner of the second play-off
The seventh member of the Division I will be winner of the third play-off between the losers of the first and second play-off.
The rest of the 8 teams who participated in KCL this year will form Division II next year, when the Kanto Cricket League will come under the auspices of Japan Cricket Association. In the following years, the top and bottom two teams of Division II and Division I will swap their positions.
Brief results of all matches are available here.
Tidbits
1. Steve Waugh christened Michael Atherton cockroach. Why?
2. Robert Peel, slow left-arm bowler, played 22 tests for England. His English County career with Yorkshire came to an abrupt end in 1899. What incident on the filed led to the sudden end? (Hint: This is a common phenomenon in Tokyo cricket!)
Answers at the end of this Newsletter…
How to select the correct bat for your game
At some point in your cricketing career you have to accept that a new bat has to be bought and the Old Faithful has to stand aside and play second fiddle to a new blade full of the joys of run making. Read this column which is aimed to make it easier for the individual to go out and confidently buy their own bat knowing that they have considered all the aspects of their game and physical attributes before buying a new one.
Read the details here.
11th Annual YCAC 6-a-side Tournament
By Tony Fordyce
The first game was due to start at 09.00, but it was raining very heavily until only 15 minutes prior to that hour. Suddenly, with the arrival of your correspondent and his optimistic sunglasses, the rain stopped, and some quick mopping-up operations allowed the tournament to start only 30 minutes late in bright sunshine. In the first round games Sri Lanka beat Japan, the Rest of the World beat the Anzacs, YCAC beat the British Embassy and Pakistan beat Anzacs, all fairly comfortably. The semi-finals were won by Sri Lanka and Pakistan (YCAC giving Pakistan their closest game all day) and the Plate semi-finals by Japan and India.
The Cup final was unfortunately rather a one-sided game. Pakistan batted first and reached a very competitive total of 74 in their 5 overs. In reply, despite hitting a ‘no-ball’ 6 off the first ball, Sri Lanka lost 3 wickets very quickly and were all out for 36. In the Plate final, excellent bowling from Ashok gave India a comfortable victory over Japan.
The individual prizes, kindly donated by Allied Pickfords, were awarded as follows:
Best batsman: Amjad (Pakistan)
Best bowler : Ashok (India)
Best player: Fuji (Japan)
YCAC Defeats Singapore Cricket Club
By Tony Fordyce
Excellent cricketing weather for our first ever game against the SCC in their 149th season. An excellent result also. We won the toss (to SCC’s evident dismay) and batted first. Fortunately, despite some excellent bowling from Prasad (1-22 in 7 overs) we got off to a very quick start, mainly thanks to a quick 32 from Kamran. A huge straight 6 from pinch-hitting Lovegrove also put us in a strong position psychologically (although this was somewhat weakened when he was clean-bowled next ball). Mark, as usual this season, timed the ball extremely well, this time without giving his usual early chance, and his excellent 51 helped us, with some later contributions all round, to a fairly comfortable 167 all out. In reply, SCC lost 2 early wickets, but an excellent partnership between the Singapore national team players Bala and Ravi (not looking like a man with only 3 hours sleep) took them to 85 with only 2 wickets down and plenty of overs left. The captain was reaching his wit’s end (which did not entail a long journey) and finally accepted James Lovegrove’s voiced and unvoiced appeals for a chance with the ball. This immediately proved successful when he trapped Bala leg before and then had Ravi well taken on the deep square leg boundary, in a spell of 2-8 in 3 overs. The later batsmen were unable to keep up the required rate of scoring, thanks mainly to some excellent bowling from Avinash. Scotty Erickson was given the ball for the last over with one wicket to fall. One ball was all he needed to wrap up what was, in the end, a comfortable victory by 45 runs.
Mark was chosen as Man of the Match from the YCAC side and Prasad from SCC
Readers Forum
Just to put the record straight, YCAC scored 1,209 runs in their KCL group matches (including innings of 358 and 345), and only played 5 games, compared with the 6 played by teams in Group A! I think this was comfortably the highest total of any team in the group matches.
Tony Fordyce
Editor: In our last issue we said that the Indian Engineers have scored the highest aggregate runs – 950 runs for the loss of 50 wickets – in the league matches. This is not true. The Indian Engineers have scored the highest aggregate runs in Group A, not in the entire league. The error is regretted.
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The correct entry in the scorebook at YC&AC if a batsman hits the ball out of the ground(local rule)
I believe the correct scorebook entry for Sriram is ‘Retired’. That, of course, means innings terminated, unless you are injured.
Paul Blamire.
Answers to the questions given above
1. Because like a cockroach he keeps coming back and is hard to get rid of.
2. He took to the filed drunk!
That’s all in this edition!