Kanish Bhalla collects his award after his 6/26 haul.

Kanish Bhalla collects his award after his 6/26 haul.

With over 200 kids excited to take part in the inaugural California Cricket Festival (CCF), the opening round of matches were played yesterday.

The tournament is being played in two age groups, U12 and U15. The teams making the trip to participate in this historical event are, CCA Sharks; Atlanta; Cricmax NJ; TCA Dallas; ACA ST. Louis; Orange County; EYCA and CCA Centurions.

They will compete for the U12 honors, and the U15 teams that will battle for the crown are CCA Falcons; Orange County; Cricmax NJ; South Cal; BPL Chicago; TCA Dallas; Atlanta and Seattle.

In the exciting first day, CCA’s (3 teams) and TCA’s (2 teams) won all their games. There were some amazing individual performances.

Ruthvik Chunduri (right) struck 144 and Sohan Bhat (left) 79.

Ruthvik Chunduri (right) struck 144 and Sohan Bhat (left) 79.

There were 3 centurions (All U15):
• Ruthvik Chundury 141* for CCA Falcons vs Orange County
• Deep Joshi 112* for CricMax vs South Cal
• Atul Iyer 101* for Atlanta v/s Seattle

Best bowling spell:
• Kanish Bhalla for U-12 CCA Sharks: 6/26 against Atlanta.

Below are the results of Day 1 matches:
U12:
• CCA Sharks 183/6 (Ved 49) beat Atlanta 156/9 (Ishaan 43, Kanish 6/26)
• Cricmax NJ 154/7 (SaiTeja 43, rishi 3/26) lost to TCA Dallas 156/9 (Prasun 63*, Shapnil 2/21)
• ACA St. Louis 141 (Arnav 39, Vardaan 3/19) lost to Orange County 142/4 (Vivek 39, Yash 2/25)
• EYCA 120/8 (Darsh 19, Khush 2/13) lost to CCA Centurions 121/0 (Rajat 46* Hari 36*)

Rajat Sood poses with his award after an excellent all-round performance.

Rajat Sood poses with his award after an excellent all-round performance.

U15:
• CCA Falcons 308/1 (Ruthvik 141*, Sohan 79*, Abhishek 40) beat Orange County (Devang 29, Suprav: 3/8, Ruthvik: 2/4)
• CricMax NJ 233/5 (Deep 112*, Akul 2/22) beat South Cal 90 (Shardul 39, Siddhart 2/21)
• BPL Chicago 243/4 (Ishan 76*, Simeon 58*) lost to TCA Dallas 244/7 (Ahan 68, Tejas 2/24)
• Atlanta 295/5 (Atul 101*, Smeet 40) beat Seattle 157 (Sathya 59, Vishal 3/17)

Action continues today with four games in both age groups, so please come out and support the youngsters but if you can’t make it to see the kids live, you can follow the action on the event’s landing page http://calcricket.org/cricketfestival.