The Provincial Cricket Championships will take place this weekend, with matches played on Saturday September 3 and Sunday September 4 in St. John’s. A best of three match series will determine the fate of the Atul Ahuja Cup. The Cup was presented by former Cricket Canada CEO Atul Ahuja, and is contested between the 1st and 2nd place teams in the regular season. The Avengers repeated as league champions and will take on the second place Eagles, with game 1 scheduled for 1:30 pm on Saturday, with games 2 and 3 (if required) scheduled for 10 am and 1:30 pm on Sunday.
The contest looks to be a close one, as the Avengers and Eagles tied on points in the regular season and the final standings were determined on net run rate. The Eagles are a greatly improved team this year (last season they recorded just one win), and beat the Avengers twice in their three regular season games. Asim Razman has made a great all round contribution, with his fast accurate bowling, hard hitting batting, and dynamic fielding, and he has been well supported by Saeed Khan’s classy batting, Umair Khan’s big hitting (Umair travels from Deer Lake each weekend to play), and strong bowling from Osama Saeed, Zohair Syed and Ali Malik. The Avengers are led by Rahul Vashishtha, recently named to Cricket Canada’s high performance squad, who leads the league in both batting and bowling. They have a strong bowling attack with Rahul well supported by the experienced Sentil Selvamani, and Sarawana Kumar.
The Herringshaw Cup will be contested at 10 am on Saturday, between the MH WirthStallions (3rd place) and Rising Stars (4th place). The cup is named after Liam Herringshaw, the driving force behind the founding of the organization five years ago. The Rising Stars are new to the league this year, and recored just one win, but have been competitive, led by captain and all rounder Adeel Illyas whose batting and spin bowling has been very effective. Harish Kanna has made a good impression with both bat and ball in his first season, as has Taqrim Ghous. Rakesh Negi leads both batting and bowling for the Stallions, and is well supported by pace bowlers Abrar Khan and Neelav Deewan, and the batting of Hummam Bin Saif and Saad Jahangir.
Summer League awards will be presented between the Herringshaw Cup match and the Atul Ahuja Cup opener at 1 pm on Saturday.
All matches are played at RCAF field (RCAF Road, off Torbay Road), and spectators arew welcome (admission free).