HSV cricket team has won the indoor cricket championship in the 2nd year running. The tournament was held in Goettingen on 5th and 6th of April, 2008. The HSV Cricket team participated with a great vigor, commitment, motivation and team spirit. Though it was a long journey from Hamburg to Goettingen but HSV Cricket team manager Mr. Khalid Rauf and the President Mr. Hartmut Stoepel made excellent arrangements for the travel.
 

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This was a very tricky tournament with many different kind of restrictions with hard as well as easy scoring opportunities.

On the first day HSV played two matches against Oldenburg and HICC cricket teams which were won comprehensively. HSV cricket has an extremely strong bowling line up which proved too much for the opponents and they beat both of the teams by taking all of their wickets.

The 2nd day was even better and it brought the best out of HSV’s team. The last group match was against the archrivals from Hamburg, the Pak Aalemi cricket club. Even though HSV had already qualified for the semi finals by winning the first two matches with best average but this one had a special significance and it was taken by the teams and the public as kind of a final. Pak Aalemi club is also a good outfit but it was no match on the day with HSV’s enthusiasm and motivation to win. HSV batted first and gave a decent target to chase and even though the public was anticipating a close contest, it turned out to be a one sided affair and Pak Aalemi cricket club was bowled out for the 2nd  lowest total of the tournament.

Then came the knockout stage. Goettingen played the semifinal against Oldenburg and HSV against Alster cricket club. The first semifinal turned out to be a one sided match and Goettingen won it with much ease. On the other hand the 2nd one unexpectedly proved to be a real tough and entertaining one, perhaps the toughest match for HSV’s team in this tournament. HSV won the toss and elected to bat first. It looked like a good decision for the first couple of overs as the openers Mr. Bilal and Mr. Fahad opened the innings and then suddenly they lost 4 wickets in two overs – all through run outs. This was a big shock and HSV were in a very dangerous situation at 41 / 4 in 4 overs. Here comes the commitment of this great team, Mr. Khalid Rauf came as the last man and he started to play cautiously with the vice captain Mr. Barkat, the goal was to play all of the 10 overs and what a job they did. Both came back not outs after having a partnership of 90 runs in 6 overs. So in the end HSV gave a good target of 131 runs. . Alster CC started strongly but lost wickets in regular intervals especially one taken by Mr. Bilal in the 6th over of the innings which checked their flow of runs and eventually HSV won the match with comfort.

Last but not the least here comes the final between the two undefeated teams so far in the tournament. Since it was the final so one had to lose and the other to stay undefeated 
Goettingen won the toss and elected to bat first. HSV got the new ball but for some reason the fast bowlers suddenly lost their control and gave away too many extras and hence runs in the first 5 overs.  At that stage it looked like that Goettingen will go on to make more than 160 runs in 10 overs but the HSV captain Zaheer Malik is a smart guy, he brought Mr. Khalid Rauf into the attack who checked the flow of score with his loopy leg breaks which resulted in a little panic in Goettingen team and hence got a very important wicket for the team through run out. Then came in Shakeel who bowled a couple of fast, furious and economical overs which resulted in still decent to defend but a much comfortable target of 132 runs for HSV than earlier expected.
Then came Fahad and the Captain Zaheer out to go for these runs. They started very well but in the 3rd over Fahad got unfortunately run out. Still Zaheer was in a dangerous mood and in some splendid form. He hit sixes, fours and ran very hard to take HSV to 102 in 7 overs. Since they had many wickets in hand the rest of the target was not that hard and was achieved comfortably with one over to spare.

For his classy 75 runs in the final and some other good innings, Zaheer was named best batsman of the tournament while Mr. Dennis of Oldanburg was declared best bowler of the tournament for taking 4 wickets for 4 runs in 2 overs against Pak Aalemi a day earlier. Mr. Hartmut Stoepel gave these prizes to the respective players while the runners up trophy was collected by Mr. Raghav, the captain of Goettingen and the Championship trophy was received by Mr. Zaheer of HSV cricket.

The HSV team which participated in the tournament : Zaheer Malik, Barkatullah Masaud, Muhammad Bilal, Khawaja Khalid Rauf, Fahad Saeed, Tahir Ahmed Butt, Shakil Ahmed, Naeem Ahmed and Qamar uz Zaman.