Winter League 2010 was the first major tournament in which IISJ participated. We played the first game against Sano and the result was 131-41. This was not a very good start at all, but, as this was the first game for some of the players, a similar result was expected. From that game on, we concentrated on batting sensibly and not getting out regularly. Unfortunately, it did not work, but there were a few games where we made decent scores. The major problem we had was that we lost way too many wickets in every match.
Adore VS IISJ 92-55 (14 outs) – Without counting outs, score= 92-125
Sano VS IISJ 131-41 (8 outs) – Without Counting outs, score= 131-81
Sharks VS IISJ 85-33 (12 outs) – Without counting outs, score= 85-93
Yamada P. VS IISJ 80-81 (9 outs) – Without counting outs, score= 80-126
YFK VS IISJ 65-51 (8 outs) – Without counting outs, score= 65-91
Mach VS IISJ 124-79 (7 outs) – Without counting outs, score= 124-114
Wyverns VS IISJ 129-83 (9 outs) – Without counting outs, score= 129-128
If we would have played without getting out so much, the results would have been much different altogether. Scoring 100+ runs without a female player in the team is quite impressive. That’s one of the positive points we can take from this tournament. Apart from our first 2 games, our fielding was average. In bowling we didn’t have much of a success. In batting, Arpit, one of the major players for IISJ, was not near his best throughout the tournament. In the Wuki Wuki Summer League it was very normal to have few boundaries in Arpit’s score. He managed 20+ scores with comfort, but in this tournament his best score was 16. Shubham played well in this tournament but if he would have not got out 12 times, he would have been very impressive. And one thing we didn’t manage to do was collect 6 players for every game. This cost us dearly in a few games. The playoffs went nicely for us in the beginning. We won the toss, fielded first, kept Mach to 52 and chased that very comfortably. I am very proud of the performance and happy that IISJ is placed at 4th Position.
Individually, this was the 1st successful tournament in Japan for me. I scored 130 runs (8 outs) including playoff scores with a strike rate of 131.31% and took 7 wickets. I was very happy to get inside the top 10 batsmen (4th) and bowlers (5th). One interesting thing I realized was that I can face fast bowlers without much of a difficulty. I used to find it very difficult to face fast bowlers in JCL, KCL and last year’s Winter League. Now I feel that it was not difficult after all. I will try to make the most of these skills/form in the upcoming outdoor season.
I would like to thank Chiba Sharks behalf of IISJ for the help they provided throughout the tournament. Despite how the playoffs went, one thing all of us in IISJ know without shadow of a doubt is that ” Sharks are the BEST” in every aspect of the game.
Navin Jinasena
Captain, IISJ Phoenix
Player, Chiba Sharks
