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2006 ECC Indoor Report
This years European Cricket Council Indoor Championship had come full circle, and, the competition had come home to be played at Lord’s Indoor Cricket School, where it had started a decade before.
Portugal participated with a all national squad under the able guidance of coach Graeme West, alongside Greece, Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Holland and newcomers Finland- The team consisted of Carlo Buccimazza(captain), Paulo Buccimazza, Ricardo Pais, Uttam Mohan, Ricardo Antunes, Miguel Menezes and Silkesh Deuchand.
In the round robin phase of the tournament, Portugal lost only one game, that to Denmark, finishing second. Denmark finished top, having won all their games, France third, followed by Greece, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg and Finland. The games in this phase of the tournament against Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium and France, Portugal batted first setting good totals, which our bowling attack ably defended. In the games against Finland, Greece and Denmark, although batting first, they were restricted to lower totals, 73, 85 and 55 respectively, which our bowlers were able to defend against Finland and Greece, but not so against Denmark.
In a 1-3, 2-4 semi-final, Portugal played 4th placed Greece. Portugal again batted first and despite a good opening partnership, they collapsed from 69 for no loss to 86 for 3 after ten overs. Greece in contrast to their previous performance against Portugal, reached their target with 5 balls to spare, putting them into the final against Denmark, who had beaten France. Portugal played France in the 3rd-4th play off, which we won comfortably, dismissing them for 37 runs in 6,2 overs, and achieving the target in 4,4 overs with the loss of only 1 wicket. In the final Greece lost to Denmark, who have now matched Portugal’s achievement of winning the tournament on 3 occasions.
For Portugal it was good to finish third, but disappointing to know that in terms of games lost in the tournament we should have finished in second place. Consolation was found in the statistics of the tournament, where Paulo Buccimazza finished top allrounder with 15 wickets and 144 runs, ahead of George Stogianos of Greece with 5 wickets and 197 runs (Player of the Tournament), Uttam Mohan finished 4th leading run aggregate with 183 runs and Paulo Buccimazza 9th with 144 runs, and the cherry on the top, the top three bowling performances all came from Portugal – Paulo Buccimazza 15 wickets(av. 6,67), Carlo Buccimazza 9wickets(av. 13,11) and Silkesh Deuchand 4 wickets(av. 14,0). All credit must be given to the team, who have moved out of the shadows of Torben Rakine and Nelson Ferreira, and performed admirably at this level of cricket in Europe.
© Portuguese Cricket Federation
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