Hello and welcome to this edition of the I.E.C.C. Newsletter.
The Japanese cricket fraternity was shaken out of their Golden Week holiday mood when three of the seven members of the KCL Committee submitted their resignations, disappointed and disgusted by the way the Committee has been operating this year. In their resignation letter sent out to all clubs in the KCL, the members, who have been serving the Committee for a number of years, alleged a series mistreatments and subject of being personal abuses by certain others within the Committee. They also alleged the Committee of being undemocratic and rubber-stamp of one person. The members who resigned from the Committee are Robert-Gills Martineau, Mumtaz Alam and Biju Paul.
The resignation letters focused more on the shenanigans of one or two individuals within the Committee. While Martineau cited social, ethical, professional and financial and some unreported dealings by the Committee as the reasons for his resignation, both Alam and Paul, in their combined letter, cited unprofessional and undemocratic conduct of at least two of the Committee members. They also called for the dissolution of the present Committee and election of a new one, which is widely being supported as the solution for this imbroglio.
The root cause of the current unfortunate saga was the KCL's insistence this year that every player must be registered with the JCA in order to take part in the KCL. As reported in the last issue of this Newsletter, while this requirement was accepted as the normal practice, what irked a section of the players was the requirement that their personal information must be provided. Quite a large number of the KCL clubs were not pleased by the way they were forced to accept some of these demands and the now resigned members of the Committee took the view that this issue must be dealt with caution and pragmatism.
Following a deluge of emails to the Committee opposing this requirement, both public and private, the Indian Engineers took a tough stance on the issue saying that it is rather strange for an amateur league like KCL to insist more on bureaucratic stuff than organisational matters and playing conditions. Ensuing email exchanges between the Committee and Engineers and events that followed resulted in one member of the Committee moving a no-confidence motion against a fellow member, Biju Paul, and president of the Indian Engineers C.C. on what now appears to be flimsy grounds. The allegations are that Paul leaked privileged KCL emails to his club, party to a discussion within his own club where a member of his club alleged threatened spoofing the KCL official email, and deliberately attempted to undermine the KCL.
This unprecedented move by a section of the Committee and the subsequent resignation of the three members sparked an outrage in the KCL circuit resulting in a large number of the clubs, in turn, declaring a no-confidence in the remaining depleted Committee. While Allegations and counter-allegations flew thick and fast, some cool-headed cricketers have called for everyone to exercise caution in the interest of the game.
The shocking aspect of the no-confidence move against Paul is that the Committee could stomach personal diatribes, which has nothing to do with cricket, thrown towards three senior fellow members by two relative new comers - one of whom never failed to remind others time and again that he has served "far weightier" Committees while the other kept reminding the three that the voting strength within the Committee is 4-3 in his favour - while all hell broke loose when the three took a dissenting stance on cricket related issues. In his resignation letter, Martineau, who originally registered the Japan Cricket Association with the ICC on July 1, 1986 as an Affiliate member(Japan is an Associate member now), and whose immense contribution to Japanese cricket helped the game spread significantly outside the Kanto region, rubbished the Committee's move accusing the Committee of double standards, clearly citing examples when the Committee stood as silent spectators when he himself was a subject of verbal abuses by the perpetrators of the no-confidence motion.
Following their resignations, an EGM has been called on Sunday, June 4 in
Tokyo after a large number of the clubs have demanded it. Some of the proposals
aired in the last few weeks are:
- the entire members of the present Committee must stand down for the remainder
of the season and a new Committee be elected
- A proper constitution for KCL must be adopted. KCL now has only a set of
bylaws, which largely deals only with playing conditions, which has not been
revised since 2001.
- In future, the members of the Committee must have played at least three years
of cricket in Japan before they are eligible to stand for election
- In order to avoid any conflict of interest, which is cited as partially a
reason for the current mess, and maintain its independence, the future KCL
Committee members should not be holding any other official positions with
another cricket body in Japan.
This is the worst-ever crisis to envelop the KCL in its brief history. The KCL and its predecessor, Kanto Cup, have always been run by independent Committees that consist of elected members but a controversy of this nature and magnitude is a first for KCL in particular and Japan cricket in general.
Despite the ongoing mayhem on its administrative side, the KCL clubs are fighting hard on the ground which is occasionally spoilt by the rain. In D-I, the Tokyo Giants and Wyverns lead the table with 10 points each followed by the Indian Engineers, whose all three matches till date were washed out, with 8 points.
In D-II, Group A, the Tokyo Bay, British Embassy and Dragons lead the pack with 10 points each after having played 2 matches each. In Group B, Nagoya(11) leads close rivals Al Karam and Gunma by 2 points.
KCL Records
Joff Bradley of Ichihara Sharks established a new record for most runs in an over when he conceded 30 runs in a match against Al Karam in April.
Gavin Beath established a bowling record against the YC&AC on Sunday with figures of 7/25 bettering 6/11 by Avinash Jadhav of the YC&AC against Millennium in 2004.
All the KCL records are available here.
The newly created Japan Cricket League played its first matches on April 30. The match between the Friends XI and YC&AC saw Friends achieving a rare record, which will be hard to beat, when they scored 406/6 against a hapless YC&AC. For Friends Umar Bhatt and Aamir Ali both scored centuries while Naeem ud Din came up with a solid 59. Umar had scored 141 and Aamir 130 to help Friends achieve their place in Japan cricket. While the run fest was going on in Yokohama, the Indian Engineers went down fighting to Gunma, their second successive loss to the same opposition this year.
In yet another positive development, the Gunma U-17 team, raised and coached by the Gunma SportsSpeak English School, will take part in the University competition this year.
The Tyler Foundation, a Japan-based nonprofit organization supporting children with cancer and their families in Japan, announced a sporting extravaganza in autumn this year. The events, which include a sports dinner, golf day and celebrity cricket match at the YC&AC is to be attended by former English captain Mike Gating, former England and British Lions rugby player Jeremy Guscott, and numerous others. Here are the dates:
September 29 -- sports dinner at the Grand Hyatt, Roppongi Hills.
September 30 -- golf day with the sporting stars.
October 1 -- celebrity cricket match at Yokohama Country and Athletic Club.
More information is available at http://www.tylershineon.org/index.php/events.
The Tyler foundation was inspired by Tyler Ferris' - son of Kim and Mark
Ferris, who is one of the best all rounders in Japan currently - two-year battle
with infant leukemia. He lost the battle when he was two years old.
Visit their home page.
Ian Gason reports:
The Tokyo Wombats made their second appearance in the Chiang Mai Sixes, played
at the beautiful 106 year old Gymkhana Club's cricket ground, at the start of
April.
They were given the honour of opening the 31 team tournament, and didn't disappoint, racking up 103 in 5 overs and recording a comfortable victory over local Zimbabweans, Floggers & Robbers. Surrey Vagrants gave them a quick lesson next up, and so they headed into the Sheild (or 2nd) Division. A last ball 6 handed Wombats a 1 run loss against Bahrain's Awali, who they had themselves beaten on the last ball in '05. Two comfortable wins over locals Irish Pub Gangreen and Darwin (Aust) Jameson Diletanttes followed, and their advancing depended on a (unlikely) upset in the Awali v Irish match. Irish set an admirable target of 82. With 3 balls to go a missed run out allowed an overthrow and crictically got Awali's danger man on strike. A four followed and he retired, with 1 ball and 1 run to go. The field came in. The ball dollied up to cover...and was dropped! Awali (for whom Millennium & Japan's Naoki Saida now plays!) advanced to the final.
The CM Sixes isn't all about cricket. It's about a great week in a great city, with good food, good weather, and good friends. This year was special, as the ground had been completely re-laid after the devastating floods in '05. The single-minded determination of one Eric Little and the Gymkhana ground staff cannot be praised enough. All the funds raised by the tournament go into junior cricket in Thailand, and the Thai youngsters are lacking ian neither talent nor spirit.
Tokyo Wombats left their unique paw-print on the Sixes. Their drinking exploits after the Irish game was reported in The Bangkok Post. Wombats wore yukatas to the Sixes pig-spitting BBQ, and the sight of 9 Wombats in traditional Japanese attire running around the cities bars was warmly received. They played hard both on and off the pitch, gave generously to junior cricket programs, and will be one of the first to sign up for 2007, the 20th Chiang Mai Sixes.
For photos (none of cricket!): http://www.tokyowombats.com/gallery.html
For general sixes information: http://www.cricketsixes.com/
The new ranking as of April 30 shows a few teams have come to the top 10 on the basis of some strong performance in April. The top 10 teams are:
1. Gunma Eleven Star
2. Al Karam
3. Wyverns
4. Tokyo Wombats
5. Shizuoka Kytes
6. Millennium
7. Friends XI
8. YC&AC
9. Tokyo Dragons
10. Tokyo Bay
See the full list here.
As always, you are also welcome to write to us with your views/suggestions/feedback/criticism on the Rating system.
Your take on the England cricket team ?
In ascend - 50%
In descend - 10%
Ashes was a one off affair - 40%
Is there excessive international cricket being played?
Editor: We encourage our readers to write back to us with your articles, opinion, feedback and criticism. Feel free to write about anything related to cricket, in Japan or outside. We will publish them verbatim as long as a decent language is used.
42 runs in one over
An amateur cricketer smashed six sixes, a four and followed it up with a two for good measure. Full article here.
We bring yet another video from Google. This a small clip from a cricket match between Indian and Pakistan showing the cameraman playing the role of cupid between Zaheer Khan and a spectator.
Note: Beginning the Issue #39 (May 6, '04), we bring you some interesting snippets from the cricket world, to celebrate the fourth anniversary this Newsletter and first anniversary of our popular "Trivial Facts" series. The same will be published on the front page of our website too.
"I want complete barbarism on the field" - Bobby Philips, the new captain of the Indian Engineers in a motivational email message to his team.
Note: Beginning Issue #56, we bring you some KCL picks. These are either the comments heard on the ground or nick names of certain players. These comments are reported to us by our readers at various times and are intended only to bring some fun for the readers. It is not our intention to offend any player or club.
Nick name:
Paul Dingwell (Sharks): "Postage-Stamp Ground Victim"
1. Sanath Jayasurya's 134 off 69 balls against Pakistan in Singapore with a strike rate of 194.20 is widely regarded as the most explosive one-day innings by a batsman.
2. According to Herschelle Gibbs, Australians did not sledge the Proteas during "that" historic match.
That's all in this edition!