The 22nd annual Spirit of Cricket Tournament started on December 1 at the Auckland Domain has seen teams AIS United and TANZ City Boyz in the lead winning two matches each in the first two Sundays of the tournament.
The eleven teams competing in this tournament are Mighty Blues (the defending champion), AIS United (2018 runner-up), former champion Probasee Bengalee, Deccan Acers, Rising Stars, NZ Telugu Tigers, Black Hawks, Royal Knights, Tamil Thunders, Telangana City Boyz and founder TUFXI.
Organised by Migrant Community Cricket Trust and supported by a number of community organisations, retail brands and Auckland Cricket, the tournament has a dedicated website that has details of every match, scorecard, player and team statistics, best performers, schedule, points table and results.
The matches will be held every Sunday until the finale in March 2020- and in the first two days batsman, Suhas Shanbhogue from AIS has scored the highest run so far with 79 runs in one match with a strike rate of 121.54.
Bowler Sukeerth Madaka from TANZ City Boyz grabbed ten wickets in two innings with an economy of 3.25, following him is Krishna Paruchuri from AIS with six wickets in one inning with an economy of 0.75.
In the overall ranking, Sukeerth Madaka is leading with 487 points followed by Suhas Shanbhogue with 311 points.
After AIS and TANZ City Boyz, Probasee Bengali and Deccan Rising Stars are at third and fourth rank with five points each, NZ Telugu Tigers and defending champions Mighty Blues with four points each, Royal Knights and Black Hawks with just one point, and Deccan Acers and TUF XI yet to open an account on the points table.
A minimum of four matches will be played each Sunday with the finale in the last week of March 2020.
“This tournament is one of the longest-running cricket tournaments in New Zealand (on a community and domestic level), and the players who once started and played in different teams are now part of the organising team bringing this massively successful event together,” Prashant Belwalkar, organiser of the event told The Indian Weekender.