Neel Patel [South Alabama] named our USA All Star Captain for Jan 2019 Series
Neel Patel- South Alabama bowling for South West All Stars. ABD Sheik batting for USA.
Previous American College Cricket USA All Stars team Captains were;
Manik Kuchroo Harvard , who took the challenge of getting the USA vs Canada Series started back in May 2015 under very challenging circumstances where some players couldn’t get their visas in time for the event. Canada won 3-0
Next the Series was played in Riverside, California with Sai Ramesh as Captain. This team was packed with top talent that included Saurabh Netravalkar Cornell who had played for India in the U19 2010 World Cup. USA won 2-1 with rain and strong winds affecting some great cricket.
Back in Canada for the May 2016 Series Canada took this one behind a century by Captain Hassan Mirza Ryerson. Again USA was affected by visa problems for a lot players. Canadian immigration, in unpredictable ways making it difficult for verifiable college students to travel.
Texas was next, in Jan 2017, at Moosa Stadium, the best venue so far for the Series and this time USA was led by Netravalkar to a 3-0 Sereies win, though all the games were exciting with very good play by Canada despite losing.
Netravalkar could not make the next Series in Canada so Andy Sudan who had led a new Everest team to the National finals took over as Captain and ably led USA to ties the Series 1-1 with 1 game washed out by rain. This game was also notable because USA was able to defeat Canada in Canada, something that had proved difficult. Krithik Udayshankar and Meetu Patel score centuries.
The 6th Series was in Orlando, and Captain Netravalkar was called up to represent USA in the Caribbean Super50, whilst 3 players suffered from food poisoning so a depleted USA went down 3-0 . What was to be the 7th Series, Canada, did not happen because of a long winter leaving fields unplayable even after the usual time the Toronto cricket season usually started. Then colleges went off on their summer break.
The Captain for the 7th American College Cricket USA vs Canada Series to be held at Moosa Stadium in Houston is Neel Patel who led South Alabama to the Nationals Finals last March, and 2 of the 3 exciting games on SONY. Neel founded the South Alabama club as an undergrad, graduated but then came back to do his MBA, partially motivated by the opportunity to play in American College Cricket again – and boy, did it pay off.
