48 Games, 5 Days of Fun End ! Semis & Finals to be shown on SONY !
2017/18 Season MVP Arjun Verma (Harvard)receiving the Jamaica Tallawahs Award from Talalwahs CEO Jeff Miller. Lloyd, Yoga Ramsamooj & Hugh Doyle (GWU) look on. Pic by Vojta Drmota (Harvard)
In March 2017 we became the first major cricket tournament to be affected by a Snow Storm, and this year we repeated that feat when a Storm happened on the day most teams fly to the Championship ! However the weather in Ft Lauderdale was amazing and great for cricket, so with every player determined to make it, all the matches went on with minimal rescheduling. In all 48 matches were played, 4 on day 1 and 3 on Day 5, which meant 41 games were played in the 3 days in between ! 300 players came from as far as Toronto, Montreal, Iowa & Texas. Scoring was done with Cricclubs.
BATTING
3 Centuries & 37 Fifties were scored :
133 by Ayyappa Das (Iowa State), SR 207.41
113 Sujal Patel (South Alabama) SR 204.76. Sujal struck 23 Sixes !
108 Neel Patel (South Alabama) struck the most 4s, 28 !
Near centuries :
97 Jean Paul Rocke (Ryerson)
90 Vijay (USF)
89 Yashep Rajpar (Everest)
88 Rahil Mehta (Texas A & M) – Rahil also had the highest Average 175, only being out once.
Kathik Gattepalli (UT Dallas) averaged 109 whilst NJIT’s Neel Patel aggregated 108 at a SR of 240.
BOWLING
4 bowlers took 10 or more wickets & there were 12 instances of 4 or more wickets by a bowler.
Rutgers Capt Hassaan Wajeeh took the most with two 4 wicket hauls to get 12 at 10 runs.
Usman Ayyaz (MIT) took 10 in just 3 games at 8.4 runs.
Babar Arshad (USF) 11 w at 7.45
Varun Belide (South Alabama) 10 at 9.7
FIELDING : Rutgers’ keeper Pragya Sikka featured in 13 outs, including 5 catches & 2 stumpings, way ahead of # 2 Neel Patel with 8 including 5 catches, though Neel is a primary bowler too. The diving, tumbling, somersaulting Sikka was a highlight reel by himself.
In the Cricclubs Player Rankings, which is based purely on Stats South Alabama had the Top 3 : Sujal Patel, Neel Patel & Kinal Patel. Ryerson’s Jean Paul Rocke was # 4 whilst Texas A & M’s Rahil Mehta was #5.
As all our Players should know, MVP and other Awards are NOT based only on Stats but also include OFF the field work such as what our Club Presidents & other Club Executives do, Facebook Sharing by players etc.
Accordingly the Jamaica Tallawahs & Worldwide Sports Management Award for the American College Cricket 2017/18 Season MVP went to Arjun Verma (Harvard). It was presented by Tallawahs CEO Jeff Miller. After a tough start as an 18 year old Club President Arjun elevated his performance off the field, to go with his tremendous all round playing. He culminated the year by getting the great Gautam Gambhir to do a video wishing American College Cricket and the Harvard Cricket Club well.
The 8 Quarter Finalists were : UT Dallas, USF, South Alabama, NJIT, Texas A & M, Ryerson, Rutgers with Everest earning the Wild Card spot, and South Alabama being a first timer to any Nationals Playoffs. The winners made it through to the Semis for the matches played on SONY Sunday : South Alabama, USF, Rutgers, Ryerson.
3 teams played their first Nationals and Laurier did the best, placing 9th, just missing qualifying for the Playoffs, MIT & Dartmouth were the other 2. Penn State had their best ever Nationals, 10th place. North East Regional Champion Northeastern & Mid Atlantic Champion Drexel both had disappointing Nationals, as did UMass Lowell based on their performances at Regionals but Virginia Tech, George Washington & Yale moved up in National Rankings with their performances.
Whatever the result for any team, the 300 Student Athletes enjoy the weather and other attractions of the Ft Lauderdale area, including the beaches. As a location for college students to spend Spring Break in USA it can not be beat !
Ten games were Live Streamed, and those videos can be seen on the American College Cricket Facebook page, whilst the Semis & Finals will be shown on SONY Entertainment Television, presented by SLING TV, in USA this weekend and next. Through SLING the matches can be seen on phones & ipads. Times will be posted on the American College Cricket Facebook page.
ALL results, scores & Stats can be found here on the Cricclubs link on our website :
https://cricclubs.com/americancollegecricket/listMatches.do?clubId=3456
