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Belgium finishes 5th in the ECC U 15 second division championships
In stark contrast to the 3rd Division Championships hosted by Belgium, the Under 15’s endured searing heat conditions with temperatures above 30 degrees C during the tournament hosted by Cricket Espana at La Manga in south east Spain. The format of the championship followed that of previous years but with more teams at this level. Belgium were drawn in group B together with Cyprus Gibraltar Guernsey and the hosts Spain. Group A comprised France, Germany, Jersey, Italy, and the Isle of Man. This was the first tournament that had 10 participating Countries at this level. With some work to do, the U15’s took the opportunity of using the excellent facilities to spend 2 days on site training ahead of the first game against Spain. Marc Vandereviere assisted the national coach, Fazil Mahmoud in the run up to the tournament. The young squad performed well against Spain with a good batting score from J. Savani ‘s 43 runs. Spain came in to bat with a more conservative approach in this game and were able to just reach the Belgian score of 146 with 7 balls to spare. Having lost the opening game the pressure was on to secure positive results against the other teams. A convincing win against Cyprus with some good batting from J. Savani ‘s un beaten 51 supported by S. Shukla’s 21 allowed Belgium to set Cyprus a target of 173 to win. Belgium’s bowling attack shared success with Sebastian Shukla and Naman Parikh both taking 3 wickets each. Karan Shah supported the attack with superb bowling figures of 7 overs 2 wickets. 4 of these overs were maidens! This meant that too many wickets had been lost and Cyprus lost the match by 63 runs. No doubt the regular technical training and good spirit shown by the team was starting to pay off. However, the next opposition was the toughest challenge the team had to face in the group and which the team rose to. The game against Guernsey started with them winning the toss and setting about the business of getting runs on the board. The team tactics seemed to work with the young spinners taking wickets. Shamin Shah having figures of 4 overs 31 for 4 wickets. An admirable performance against some formidable opposition he managed to take the opening batsman’s wicket before he reached a century. Guernsey finished their innings with the greatest loss of wickets in the tournament (equaled only by Jersey) but set Belgium a target of 222 to win. Belgium batted the full 35 overs with Shaival Mehta batting all of them to the end. Belgium reached 102 in 35 overs to hear compliments from the Guernsey coach on our bowling attack. With a second loss in the group stages, a win against Gibraltar was a must. The team set about by putting 149 runs on the board for Gibraltar to get. Akshat Sanghvi top scored with 30 ably assisted by Jai Savani (21) Sebastian Shukla (15) and Shamin Shah (22 not out). The Gibraltar innings started disastrously by losing a wicket with the first Belgian delivery and the batsman edging a delivery to Akshat Sanghvi in the slips off Sebastian Shukla’s bowling giving the scorers immediate work. Gibraltar’s Captain Scott Chippolina played a defiant innings and scored 69 only to be stumped by Kahan Bhankharia (†) off Jai Savani’s tempting spin bowling. Gibraltar nearly managed to reach their target leaving 7 runs to get off the last ball of the innings. This was by far the closest game and attracted an admiring audience to witness the closing stages. The result of the group stages meant that Belgium finished 3rd in group B and would play 3rd in group A which was Italy for 5th and 6th position. The final game against Italy started with Italy winning the toss and electing to bat. The Belgium bowling attack started work straight away with a wicket with the first ball and the combination of Akshat Sanghvi in the slips and Sebastian Shukla’s bowling giving the scorers the job of putting 0 for 1 on the electronic scoreboard. The duo of Shukla and Sanghvi were at work again for the second wicket where Sebastian Shukla took a slip catch off Akshat’s bowling to remove the second opener from Italy. Italy managed to put on only 109 after losing all their wickets in 31 overs. Belgium’s response was to take conservative approach and let the Italian bowlers make the mistakes. They were aplenty and Belgium reached the low target with the loss of only 4 wickets. With 4 young players requiring special dispensation to play in the tournament, (Parth Patel, Shamin Shah, Viral Kothari, Naman Parikh) the championships proved to be a great success in many respects and no doubt encouraged the young team to make improvements in their skills to attempt a higher ranking position in the next championships. With the constant presence of the national coach, the level of every players cricket showed big improvements. Oliver Pilkington developed some skills to open the batting and Vikas Sharma showed he can move up the batting order ! Country Final Ranking Position NRR Guernsey 1 4.226 Jersey 2 2.327 Isle of Man 3 1.778 Belgium 5 1.327 Spain 4 0.843 Gibraltar 9 0.826 Italy 6 0.738 Germany 7 0.692 Cyprus 8 0.539 France 10 0.340 The Belgium squad was a follows, Rabbani Ghulam Shahid Muhammad Hiren Parikh Wasiq Syed Faisal Rafi Shaheryar Butt Shikkoh Malik (capt) Amer Diwan Ali Javed Iqbal Andre Wagener Shar Khan Nadeem Khan Sharif Sohail Kalim Nirvam Shah Fazil Mahmoud (Coach) Marc Vandereviere (Manager
© Belgian Cricket Federation
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