Top four teams namely, Mighty Blues, AIS United, Telangana Boyz and Deccan Acers have qualified for the semi-finals of the Relianz Forex Spirit of Cricket Cup 2020-21 to be held on Sunday, February 21 organised by Migrant Community Cricket Club.
The 23rd season of the tournament kicked off in November 2020 and is one of the oldest running community cricket tournaments in Auckland was started in 1998 and has only grown in numbers over the last two decades.
After an intense three months of the round-robin with the nine teams, the tournament is finally coming towards its end of 2020-21 season with two semi-finals, and a grand finale this month.
The top two teams, Mighty Blues and AIS United, won seven of the eight matches they played and qualified for the finals spearing ahead with 36 and 33 points.
The third and fourth place competition fell upon Telangana Boyz who defeated ATA Tamil Thunders, and Deccan Acers beat Deccan Rising Stars in a low scoring match qualifying for the semi-final coming weekend.
“Even though Deccan Rising Stars positioned higher in the points table, they were left out of the league after surprisingly being beaten by arch-rival Deccan Acers last Sunday,” chairperson of MCCC Prashant Belwalkar said.
Falling in points table were TUF XI at number seven, NZ Telugu Tigers at eight and Spearheads at nine winning on one of eight matches.
The top two batsmen in the tournament so far are Goutham R from Mighty Blues scoring a total of 105 runs (47 highest scores) at the strike rate of 61.05, and Arif Mohammed from Deccan Acers scoring 101 runs (45 highest) of seven matches at the strike rate of 83.47.
Chayan Khulbe from AIS United has the highest spells picking up 19 wickets, bowling 27.1 in eight matches of the tournament at an economy of 3.42, followed by Kishorekumar Ganesan from Spearheads taking 18 wickets off 30.4 overs in eight matches with an economy of 4.01.
Kaustubh Shinde from TUF XI is leading as best fielder/wicketkeeper with 19 scalps behind the stumps.
The top two tournament players are Chayan Khulbe from AIS United scoring 1217 points (points gained in batting, bowling, fielding, other and Man of the Match numbers), followed by Sadam Sadam scoring with 1188 points.
“If the alert level status of Auckland goes down by this weekend, we will have our semi-finals as scheduled at the Auckland Domain,” Mr Belwalkar said.
In the semi-finals, Deccan Acers will play against Mighty Blues and Telangana Boyz against AIS United.