Beginning of the MBA World Cricket??

By now I’ve explained what cricket is way too many times to start doing it again here … refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket for more on that. You probably know what MBA and World mean. So let’s talk about the beginning …

In early May, Fuqua (I will credit them to be the founders to MBA World Cricket) reached out to us to start the first ever inter-MBA cricket tournament. We had just concluded the Darden first year vs second year cricket game, with the first years emerging victorious in a close game. I was excited at the idea but since we were nearing the end of first year and heading out to internships we promised to co-ordinate over the summer and making it happen early fall.

Over the summer we scheduled a triangular tournament for Sept 5th in Durham between Darden, Fuqua and Kenan-Flagler. However, Kenan-Flagler cited difficulty in forming a team due to smaller size of cricket-playing community and pulled out soon. Back at Darden, we were planning to redraft the team to include fresh first year students. At the very first TNDC (Thursday Night Drinking Club), Laura Pearson (our President) told me that it’s possible for us to get funding from school if organize trials open to everyone at Darden. I was excited at the opportunity to raise awareness for the game on campus. The trials were well attended by experienced cricketers as well as people who wanted to learn the game. Given the high degree of interest, I corresponded with Fuqua to see if each of us could field two teams. The purpose of B team was to give interested people an opportunity to experience a game setting. We shortened the format of the games to have enough time for driving down and playing the two games, Darden A vs Fuqua A and Darden B vs Fuqua B.

On game day, 22 players and 5 supporters carpooled for a 3 hour drive down to Durham. Darden sported whites, while Fuqua wore blue. The A teams squared-off first, followed by the B teams. Darden A beat Fuqua A convincingly, while Darden B showed considerable grit while going down against Fuqua B. Personally, the results were really secondary to the fact that we were using cricket as a platform to interact across schools. However, we had some really passionate kids on the teams and we always had it at the back of our minds that we’re representing Darden.

The Darden Huddle

Below are highlights from the games: Fuqua A 115 all out in 15 overs (Navin 46, Shweth 27, Nishant 3/30) lost to Darden A 116/5 in 10.2 overs (Sameer Sayed 51 not out, Ankush Kaul 22, Divye Rawat 2/19)

The Victorious Darden A Team

Darden B 110 all out in 13.3 overs (Suprajj Papireddy 46, Puvi 3/20) lost to Fuqua B 111/6 in 13.4 overs (Prashant 35 not out, Naresh Kanyal 3/18)

The Darden B Team

(Pictures Courtesy Sania Chaudhry)

At this point, I would like to mention my appreciation towards Jeff Peo and Elvis Rodriguez for taking up the challenge and performing well for the A and B teams respectively. And a special thanks to our supporters who followed us to Durham to cheer the team.

It was a great experience interacting with the Fuqua community. In the Spring of 2010, we plan to invite Fuqua and a few other east coast schools for a bigger event at Darden. We’re all excited about it. This could very well be beginning of the MBA World Cricket!