NCCA Winter T20 2014/15 Season Summary
Date: April 28 2015
Congratulations!!! on another fantastic winter season. To be out there competing until the last ball of the league was bowled is a great achievement. Kudos! to every member of the team. Thanks to the execs for all the support through the season.
Goals:
Win (play to win)
Provide opportunities (new comers or experiments)
Qualify for gold cup playoffs
Of-course we wanted the Gold cup too :-)
Check out our team standings.Though there are 18 teams (across 3 pools) the real competition among the top 10 teams. These teams end up competing for the top tier (Gold cup). There is enough scope to compete and excel when playing any (in our pool) of these 10 teams. When we played the other 8 teams the focus was more on trying different combinations.
Gold cup Final:
The game (Indus vs BA All stars) was very well fought and went down the wire. We were pretty much ahead (by only a bit though) for 36 overs and lost our way towards the end. Nevertheless we should be proud of the fact that we played the finals and gave everything on that day. On hind sight one could come up with few things we could have done differently, but I thought its better to accept the result and celebrate the success. BA All Stars (our opponent) dint have it easy.
Season Highlights:
Batting:
Check out the Batting stats. Some very crucial innings from Anand/Abhishek in top order and Raja/Sumanth in middle order. Singh/Anand's terrific drives, Raja’s lightning fast running or scoops and Sumanth’s composure was a treat to watch. The only other game we lost apart from the final was one against cougars. It was a batting collapse which caused the loss. We came back strong though and never looked back.
Abhishek Singh #2 in batting at the league level. Missed the #1 by 2 runs. Congratulations!.. 346 runs in 12 T20 innings at crucial #1 position. Mind blowing!
Bowling:
All the bowlers (Vijay, Abhishek Singh, Sahu, Ramesh, Akshay, Srini etc) just did exactly what was needed. I have not seen any batsman who was at ease against our bowling attack. The highest score against our team is 142 which is not too much in a t20. Hats off! you guys. No surprises to see 4 of our bowlers in top 20 across the league. Congrats! Vijay on being #2 at league level (18 wkts at an economy of 5.7). Sahu’s Economy is 4.0 would you believe that? Singh had another great season with the ball as well (13 wkts with Ecn of 5)
Fielding:
I won’t even bother looking at Indus’s fielding stats for season. At the league level 5 Indus fielders are in top 15 and it does not even have Raja lol :-) who is electric. The fielding was just high quality. We hardly dropped any catches, there were many direct hits and dint give any over-throws. Part of the reason why our bowlers looked good and the opponents never scored more than 6-7 RPO is the amazing fielding. Well done guys! fielding was the X factor of the side and shows the team spirit.
Abhishek Singh #1 at the league level. Congratulations!
Across the team we have 63 catches and 18 run outs in 12 games which is 5.25 catches and 1.5 run-outs per game. Also if you look closely direct hits out number the assisted ones. Thats a high standard.
MVP:
Indus MVP and best Batsman: Abhishek Singh
Indus Best Bowler: Vijay Chukka
Indus Most Economic Bowler: Abhishek Sahu (Ecn 4.0)
League MVP #2: Abhishek Singh
League MVP #7: Vijay Chukka
League Best Fielder #1: Abhishek Singh
Volunteers:
I had sent out a detailed email of season responsibilities before season started. We all know how it went :-) … we had mixed success. In a full season I thought captains can use some help with some of the tasks. We need volunteers!
Though there have been some brilliant individual contributions its an all-round team effort and majority contributions which helped win games. I am sure the top contributors would agree. Our summer season is already underway. Good luck for the season and hope we can continue the effort, spirit and team work.
- Nitin P