Hello and welcome to this edition of the I.E.C.C. Newsletter.
We wish our readers a very Happy New Year and an exciting and competitive
season in 2009.
This Newsletter will celebrate the 100th issue this year. We are thankful for
the support and continued feedback our readers provide, without which we could
not have survived. Currently we have more than 300 subscribers and plenty of
online readers. Your continued feedback and opinion are always welcome.
Kansai cricket:
Despite our best efforts we are unable to contact Kansai cricket to know the
results down there, so any of the readers have any links to Kansai cricket,
please contact us so that we can update the rest.
Noting that Ricky Ponting was still setting fields to suit
retired legends Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne, former South
African batting great Barry Richards advised the Australian
captain to 'dramatically change' his thinking on placements
for the current lot. "His thinking is still about setting
fields for McGrath and Warne and he has not got the cattle
to do that," Richards said.
###
England skipper Kevin Pietersen has rubbed salt on Ricky
Ponting's wounds, claiming that Australia's drubbing at
the hands of South Africa in the first Test in Perth
brought a smile in his face. "When I was batting I saw on
the scoreboard South Africa had won - and it made me
chuckle a little bit," he was quoted as saying in 'The
Sun'.
###
To facilitate his travel to China as a cricket ambassador,
Pakistan Interior Ministry has decided to issue a blue
diplomatic passport to newly-appointed Cricket Board
Director-General Javed Miandad. "Miandad is a big name
and respected figure in Pakistan and his role as cricket
ambassador to China will help further cement ties between
both the countries," an interior ministry official said.
###
In a unique response to terror attacks on the Chabad
Centre in Mumbai, three businessmen from Los Angeles have
decided to donate USD 125,000 to enable a Jewish cricket
team from India to participate in the 18th Maccabiah Games
in Israel which attracts Jewish athletes from all over
the world, a media report said. "This is our answer to the
murderous rampage against Indian and Israeli citizens,"
Steve Soboroff, founder of the 'Committee of 18' to support
and publicise the Maccabiah games was quoted by 'The Jewish
Journal' as saying. In addition to cricket, consisting
mainly of 18-year-old players, Indian athletes will also
compete in badminton and table tennis at the games. The
games open on July 13 next year. The Committee of 18
consists of people from Los Angeles who are leaders in
entertainment, media, marketing and business fields.
###
The war-torn Afghanistan, known across the globe for its
mujahideen, will move a step closer to qualifying for the
2011 Cricket World Cup when they fly out to Argentina this
month, where first or second place in the International
Cricket Council league and division three brings
qualification for the World Cup qualifiers in South Africa
in April. "I think, God willing, we stand a good chance,"
Allah Dad Noore, the President of the country's cricket
federation and the father of Afghan cricket, was quoted as
saying by The Daily Telegraph of U.K. Cricket was brought
to Afghanistan by returning refugees from Pakistan from
the Russian occupation two decades ago. The ruling Taliban
at that time refused to accept cricket as a national game
but relented after a senior Taliban official visited a
provincial tournament and saw the support for the game.
Cricket matches now command large crowds and Jalalabad
city alone has 66 clubs.
###
The Guardian newspaper's 'World Test XI of the Year'
(2008) did not include a single Australian. "This is
brilliant; we do not really know which is the best team
in the world. For a decade, it has been Australia and
there has been nothing to argue about. Now there are
three contenders as India and South Africa challenge
Australia's supremacy," said former England all-rounder
Vic Marks, who prepared the list. Vic Marks' select XI
contained six Indians, three South Africans and two
Englishmen - Grame Smith (c), Virender Sehwag, Kevin
Pietersen, Sachin Tendulkar, A B De Villiers, Andrew
Flintoff, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer
Khan, Ishant Sharma, Dale Steyn.
###
Kevin Pietersen's relationship with England coach Peter
Moores was doomed from the very start as the skipper
respects only South African coaches or those who have
been world class players, claims his former county
team Nottinghamshire's Director of Cricket Mick Newell.
"Ideally for Kevin, the coach would be South African
or someone who was once a world-class cricketer,"
Newell told 'Sportsmail'.
###
Source: Various web and print media
Thailand to host ACC Trophy Challenge 2009
Starting from the 12th of January, Thailand will once again be buzzing
with cricket as Chiang Mai plays host to the inaugural ACC Trophy
Challenge. Last year for the first time ACC decided to host the seventh edition
of the ACC Trophy in two legs. The first leg (ACC Trophy
Elite) held recently in Malaysia saw both Saudi Arabia and Qatar being relegated
to the Challenge level thereby making room for the promotion
of the ACC Trophy Challenge finalist. The eight teams will be split into two
groups of four for the initial round robin stage, with the top
two teams from each group proceeding to the semi finals. Oman starts the
tournament as favorites with Bhutan, Maldives and Thailand vying for
the cup.
Group 'A': Oman, Bhutan, Brunei, Myanmar
Group 'B': Thailand, Maldives, Iran, China.
Results as of December 31:
Before you raise your eyebrows, let us tell you that the Rating table has been
re-ranked. Basically, beginning of every year we remove the data that is two
years old. So in this case we removed the data of 2007 season and the current
ranking is now based on 2008 results only. As the season 2009 progresses, the
results get added and in January 2010, the 2008 data will get dropped and so on.
This is to remove undue
weightage on the historical data and make the ranking based more on the current
status/strength of each club.
So after removing the 2007 data, we got some interesting results such as Nagoya
jumping to the second place and Millennium to 6th place from way down 19th. This
happens mostly because of the ratio of their win as well as the bonus points a
team accumulates by defeating a higher ranked team or qualifying the knockout
stages of any tournament that involves more than three teams. The point system
as well the each team's total points are available at http://www.ieccjapan.com/jcrating.xml
Here is the list of the top 10 teams(last month's ranking in brackets):
1 Tokyo Giants (1)
2 Nagoya (8)
3 YC&AC (2)
4 Al Karam (6)
4 Wyverns (7)
5 Tokyo Wombats (3)
6 Millennium (19)
7 Serendip (4)
8 Adore (20)
9 Kansai Lions (14)
10 Indian Engineers (16)
See the full list here.
We encourage all teams to send us your result statistics regularly so that your team's rankings remain as accurate as possible. We are in a position to obtain the results of the official tournament matches on our own but we are looking for the results of the friendly matches.
Letter from Jeff Miller, Executive Vice President of Operations:
Cricket Council USA is poised to make Cricket history by staging the largest and
richest 20/20 Cricket Tournament in North America. The name of the Tournament is
THE US T20 CRICKET TOURNAMENT '09. A total of 48 Cricket Clubs will be competing
for $100,000.00 in prize money that will be awarded to the winning Club. The
Tournament will be played on April 5-12, 2009 in South Florida, USA. Eight
Cricket fields will be utilized during the Tournament. The Semi finals and the
Final will be played at the first ever Cricket Stadium in North America located
in the Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, Florida. The other matches
will be played in the cities of Miramar, Cooper City, Lauderhill and Cricket
Council USA's beautiful Cricket Field in Delray Beach.
Cricket Clubs that have already registered for the Tournament are coming from
throughout the United States, Canada, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, United Arab
Emirates (Dubai), US Virgin Islands, West Indies and Sweden. The US T20 Cricket
Tournament '09 promises to be a wonderful CRICKET FESTIVAL with nearly one
thousand Cricketers participating and thousands of Cricket fans cheering their
favorite Clubs and Cricket
players. You and your Organization are cordially invited to participate in the
Tournament. Please refer to our website: www.cricketcouncilusa.com
Here is the last poll result:
After the battering by Australia, how will New Zealand fare against the West
Indies at the home series?
New Zealand will win 75%
New Zealand will lose 25%
Can't say 0%
Take the new poll:
Is it time for Matthew Hayden to retire?
Visit our home page today to vote!
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.
Sachin
Tendulkar's first interview (19 January 1989)
Brett Lee
on "Rendezvous with Simi Garewal" (Indian TV Show)
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.
"Umpiring is all about seeing the ball and hearing the ball" - Umpire Billy Bowden.
1. In 1985-86 series India's Kapil Dev was denied a glass of water by Allan
Border after a shot of his killed a seagull.
2. Former Indian 'keeper Dilawan Hussain became one of the founding members of
PCB.
That's all in this edition!