Division Two Playoffs - Sunday

Advancers vs. Evanston: Sun, WP3

Playing on Sunday, as is their wont, will be Evanston - a
veteran team who, as #6 seeds, are having one of their best
seasons in a while.

Evanston's bowling has always been steady to good - that has
never been a problem, what with the pace of Donald (13 wickets
at 3.9 ER this year), and the steadiness of Perry and Anthony
(20 and 16 wickets respectively). This year, there has been
the addition of the canny legspin of Rizwan, and the offbreaks
of Deron (21 and 10 wickets respectively).

But the added dimension that has turned Evanston from a solid
team into a contender is the addition of one man (though some
would say it is actually two men) - and that is Perrin Donieke.
Young, athletic, fast and truly hostile with the ball, Perrin
has been the best bowler in the league this year - yes, he may
be only 3rd in wickets (with 30 wickets in 14 matches), but it
is at the ridiculous economy rate of 2.56, by far the best in
the league. And what makes him "two men" is the batting - with
nearly 400 runs at opener he leads Evanston's run list as well
(and is in the top 10 for all batsmen). In his first year in
the division, he may already be its single best player.

Evanston's batting has sometimes been its achilles heel in the
past, but that has turned around this year - partly, as
mentioned above, by the addition of Perrin, but also by the
turnaround in form for Jim Sajjad (350 runs in 13 games), and
the contributions of several others around them (Steve, Mikey,
Rizwan and Deron have all scored over 200 runs this season,
with Deron coming off a century in the first playoff game).

Waiting for Evanston is #3 seed Advancers, a team that relies
on the strength of its spin, just as Evanston relies on the
strenght of its pace. In Shakir (27 wickets), Khadri (21
wickets) and Pavan (17 wickets) the Advancers possess by far
the best spin attack in the division. Add to that the presence
of pacemen RamGopal (19 wickets) and Saurabh (15 wickets), and
you have one of the best balanced attacks in the tournament -
not least because no less than 3 of the above 5 bowlers
concede less than 4 runs an over! It is an attack with depth
and variety, and has led the Advancers to great success this
season - they have suffered only 2 losses, and even in those
games the opposition only managed 136 and 92 runs respectively!
In fact Advancers can claim to have been very unlucky all year
- but for a rain-rule loss to IIT, they could well have been
the ones already in Division One this season instead of Peoria
(since they actually had the better runrate at the time). That
loss, however, pushed them down to 3rd spot from a potential
first and has left them needing to win the title to make it
to Division One.

The Advancers batting too is deep - they boast 6 players who
have scored fifties, and 5 with totals over 175 - but it
undoubtedly relies mostly heavily on the famous Shakir-Suresh
jugalbandi, clearly one of the top duos in the league. Both,
appropriately, averaged 47 each for the season - Shakir the
league-leader with over 600 runs, Suresh not far behind with
470. Backing them up are Sandeep, Pavan and Khadry, the first
two with over 200 runs for the year and 2 fifties apiece.

Contest to watch: The pace and hostility of Evanston's attack,
against the spin and guile of Advancer's.

IIT vs. CCI: Sunday, WP4

On Sunday CCI will return to the scene of its greatest triumph
- Washington Park, where merely 8 days earlier a young #12
seed, in the playoffs for the first time, had shown up with 10
men, and beaten the loaded #5 seeded Jolly Rovers team boasting
no less than 5 former Division One players. Given the
circumstances and the yawning gap in playoff experience, that
game must surely rank amongst the greatest upsets in recent
playoff history.

The team that authored this remarkable Cinderella-story is a
fascinating amalgam of youth and experience, and, somewhat
unusually in our league, a variety of nationalities and
cultures. The undergraduate skipper Imran leads an outfit
that includes players whose ages range from his 16-year-old
brother Hassan to his professor father Dr. Safdar, and other
personalities as richly varied as Indians from various regions
(Anil, Abhijit and Kushal have been regulars), a couple of
chatty Aussies (Manu and Chris), and a nehari-loving
former-skipper from Lahore (Tanweer). And last weekend, this
motley crew of ten men formed a cocktail potent enough to
derail the heavily favoured fifth seed.

But CCI isnt just a wonderful Cinderella story, it is a team of
talent, discipline and spirit that has played well all year.
The bowling is probably the key - the pacemen (Abhijit and
Kushal, a dozen wickets each this season) were solid and
disciplined last weekend, and skipper Imran has been the
leading wickettaker for the year (with 20). The Khan-family,
actually, contributes CCI's three leading wickettakers for
the year, with paterfamilias Dr Khan and tyro Hassan (18 and
16 apiece), followed by yet another spinner Tanweer (with 15).
CCI also bats a long way down, with 7 batsmen having gotten
over a hundred runs this year, its outstanding performers
being the two Aussies Manu and Chris, along with Tanweer
(though it was the young skipper Imran who probably played
the key innings in the playoff win, blasting a vital 43 at
the end after Manu had provided an excellent start).

Waiting for CCI is IIT, a traditional Division Two powerhouse
that had only two losses all season (one of them a hearbreaking
1-wicket loss to the eventual league topper, Peoria). IIT is
a team all of Division Two has come to know well, and
at the core they remain the same - in Ajay and Laxmi (near
570 and 430 each) they have maybe the two best batsmen in
any team in the division, and theyre capably backed up by
skipper Vasu (310), Pankaj (190) and Akhil (140). It must
be said, however, that the batting doesnt look quite as deep
as in the past, with the loss of batsmen of the calibre of
Ankur, Moyeed and Abhijit over the past couple of seasons.

The bowling has also suffered the loss of a lot of pace bowlers
in the past few years - but is still led by Padmaraju, one of
the finest pacemen in the division - backed up by Mihir, Akhil,
Vijay and Vasu. The strength of the attack, however, probably
lies in its spin bowling - Laxmi, Chakri, Sudipto and Ajay form
a very solid spin quartet, one of the most effective in the
league. All of this, in addition, is backed up by the best
fielding outfit in Division Two - fielding of the calibre
that often lifts the attack to even greater heights.

Ten may have been the New Eleven for CCI last week, as Manu
so memorably put it - but this weekend the Cinderella-team of
the league goes up against a traditional powerhouse that has
been one of the strongest teams in the division all season
long. On Sunday, we'll find out if the slipper still fits.

Contest to watch: Ajay and Laxmi against the CCI bowling.
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