By Jai Elhance
After 16 games of competitive Cricket between 8 teams, the 2021 US Mens National Championship is complete with West Red being crowned the champions of the event. Overall, it was a great tournament. There was some very high level Cricket on show over the past week.
Teams
West Red Wins: 4/4
After an undefeated tournament, West Red were truly the deserving champions of this tournament.
The side bowled really well and restricted all of the oppositions that they played against under 220.
Saurabh Netravalkar and Ruchir Joshi both picked up 8 wickets each. Harmeet Singh and Vatsal Vaghela both took 7 wickets each as well. All 4 of these bowlers ended in the top 10 most wickets for this tournament.
South Zone Wins: 2/4
The runners up in this tournament, South Zone, did really well. They fell short at the final hurdle as they were just 1 step away from a win in the finals.
South Zone were in some very close games in this tournament. In one of the games, they lost by 1 run. In another, they won by 1 wicket.
With both bat and ball, South Zone had its ups and downs. In some games they did really well, in others not so much. Overall, this was a pretty good tournament for the side as they were able to qualify into the finals.
South West Zone Wins: 3/4
South West Zone ended in 3rd place after beating West Blue in the 3rd place playoff.
Sushant Modani batted really well. In the final 2 games of the tournament for his side, he hit unbeaten centuries.
Sujith Gowda, the number 3 batsmen, couldn’t do much with bat in hand. But he did do well with the ball. Picking up 10 wickets at an economy of 3.9, Gowda was the leading wicket taker for the South West Zone.
West Blue Wins: 2/4
Ending at 4th are West Blue. They didn’t have too bad of a tournament. They won 2 and lost 2.
The problem with them in this tournament was that they weren’t able to do well with the bat. They weren’t able to score a lot of runs. The bowlers did well, but the batsmen weren’t able to back them up.
Marty Kain did really well. He scored 190 runs with the bat at an average of 47.5. With the ball, he took 11 wickets at an economy of 4.3. He started with both bat and ball in this tournament.
Mid-Atlantic Zone Wins: 2/4
Mid-Atlantic Zone didn’t have the best of tournaments. They ended in 5th after winning the 5th place playoff against the Midwest Zone.
Mid-Atlantic couldn’t do too well with the bat. Besides their final game, they lost all 10 wickets in every game.
As well as the bowlers did, without the batsmen backing you up you can’t win games, and that’s exactly what happened with the Mid-Atlantic Zone.
Midwest Zone Wins: 1/4
Midwest Zone had a disappointing tournament. After a win in the first game, they lost their next 3.
Midwest were the exact opposite of Mid-Atlantic as far their strengths go. Midwest did well with the bat, but their bowers didn’t back them. Besides 1 game, they played against the eventual champions, West Red, Midwest always scored a lot of runs.
USA U19 Wins: 1/4
The USA U19 team had a disappointing tournament. They struggled to chase scores down. This was due to a lack of partnerships. On two occasions, USA U19 were bowled out. On both the occasions, they were chasing.
Rahul Jariwala was the only batsmen who did well for the US U19 side. In 4 games, he hit 2 centuries. Since he didn’t get much support from the other end, the US could only win 1 of those games.
With the ball, USA U19 didn’t do too well either. There were too many big partnerships and those partnerships just kept on piling runs and getting their side to a big score.
East Zone Wins: 1/4
Tied with the U19 Team on number of points are the East Zone. They had a very disappointing tournament as well. The East Zone team was made up mainly of players who played for the Empire State Titans or Manhattan Yorkers in the past season of MiLC. Players from the New Jersey teams were not part of this side.
Besides their first game against the Midwest Zone, East Zone weren’t able to score too many runs in any of their games. Though there were a few 20s and 30s throughout, only Dominique Rikhi could really convert his start into a big score as he hit a hundred in the first game of the tournament.
The bowlers didn’t do too badly. Bhaskar Yadram was always among the wickets as he ended the tournament with 11 wickets, the joint most.
Jai Elhance is a 14 year old cricket enthusiast, whose blog and podcast can be found here: https://www.jaielhance.com/
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