A year which started with a bang for HSV-Cricket by winning the NDCV-Indoor cricket championship ended on an even bigger note by winning the German-Indoor cricket championship.

HSV-Cricket won all of the Northern regions (NDCV) tournaments which included the One day, Twenty20 and Indoor (Hall) championships. It also won an international club championship in Holland as well as the North Masters Twenty20 tournament. On the other hand in the German championships (which are held between the regional champions) it had mixed results. They were the 2nd best German club in Twenty20 while losing the final with a small margin and lost the semi-final of One day cricket championship.

These two defeats didn't disheart this team of spirited athletes rather enhanced their motivation to excel at the top level. The journey to play in this tournament started very early and though it was a Sunday morning, all of the team members were up very early and started towards Bielefeld at 7:00 in super fresh moods.
 

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The tournament was played in two halls between 4 regional champion teams which were HSV-Cricket, CC Bayern, Köln CC and Berlin CC.It was an 8 a side and 10 overs an innings tournament and all of the teams had to play with each other.
On paper it may look easy but one has to watch a match to understand in reality how hard it is. The players have to be extreme fit and agile to accumulate runs and to last even a couple of overs.

HSV-Cricket played it's first match against CC Bayern which was a pretty one sided affair. HSV-Cricket won the toss and asked them to bat first. All of Bayern team got out for 91 runs which HSV-Cricket completed in the 7th over with ease.

The 2nd match was played between HSV-Cricket and Köln CC and what a match it was. Köln won the toss and elected to bat first. HSV-Cricket bowled pretty well and did not let Köln players make too many runs and if it was not for more than a few un-controlled extras, Köln CC score could have been much lower than the eventual 109 runs. Still HSV-Cricket had the bating lineup to over come that target and they did start in a very calculated manner.
In the first 5 overs HSV-Cricket made 54 runs for 3 wickets so the target was a simple 11 runs per over in the next 5. It looked simple but some disarray creeped into HSV-Cricket's chase and a 3 players got out them selves run out in quick time. That made the things a little harder and eventually HSV-Cricket needed 23 runs in the last over. Now they had to hope for a few wide and no balls in the last over as hitting a six in hall is next to impossible but unfortunately there were none. The Köln CC player bowled on a simple straight line and HSV's vice captain Fahad who had played beautifuly till then had to try a six and got out in the 2nd last ball of the match thus HSV-Cricket lost this match by 9 runs.

Even after two matches the tournament was wide open for 3 teams HSV-Cricket, Köln CC and Berlin CC. Berlin CC had a bit of advantage as they had won both of their matches and now they had to play HSV-Cricket. For HSV-Cricket's 3rd and final match their job was cut out for them, Win and win BIG other wise say bye bye to the trophy.

In this match HSV-Cricket won the toss and elected to bat first. They batted as they do normally, "with authority" and compiled a high target of 130 runs. Shams and the captain Barkat were the stars in these runs and had a partnership of around 80 runs. Berlinc CC knew that even if they don't win, they have to score big runs if they want to stay at the top of the table. Though this wish never materialized and HSV-Cricket's bowlers spell their magic one after the other.
In the first couple of overs Berlin CC looked composed but when Ali Imran took the first wicket in the 3rd over, Berlin's decline started in a free fall. Rana Rehman mesmerized Berlin players with his enormous leg break spins and took 4 wickets. Eventually Fahad Saeed took hard return catch on his bowling and Berlin CC were all out for 71 runs.

This brought 3 teams together on the same points and after some calculations by the DCB panel, HSV-Cricket emerged as the winner of 2009 German Indoor cricket championship while Köln CC stood 2nd.

Mr. Khawaja Khalid Rauf, the sport director of DCB in the cheers of the teams announced the result. Then Mr. Siegfried Franz, the secretary of DCB and Mr. Brian fell, the president of DCB gave the trophy and Madel. They also thanked Mr. Khalid and the Mr. Erhard Seifert for organizing such a nice tournament.

This report is written and presented by Muhammad Bilal of HSV-Cricket.