By Peter Della Penna

USC bounced back after an opening day loss to notch two wins on day two of the American College Cricket Spring Break Championship in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. In the first of six matches played on the artificial wickets outside the stadium at Central Broward Regional Park on Thursday, USC dominated South Florida to complete a 41-run win after South Florida produced a horrid display in the field. Rishabh Nanda top scored for USC with 36 in their total of 157 for 6 in 20 overs. Nanda survived two dropped chances as well as two missed stumpings in his innings to capitalize for USC, who earned a bonus point for reaching 150 in their innings. Right arm medium pacer Jeet Poonater then took four wickets to keep South Florida pinned down.

University of Maryland-Baltimore County fell to George Mason by five runs in an 18-over match. UMBC won the toss and elected to bowl first to George Mason, holding them to a reachable total of 133 for 5. Aside from Gurnish Singh’s 38, UMBC couldn’t get anyone to fire and fell just short.

Pic (Right): Bilal Javed of George Mason shows off his team's impressive kit. George Mason's players raised funds and found sponsors by themselves to cover the cost of their kit and some tournament expenses. Their team is still not officially recognized as a club sport at GMU and therefore receives no university funding. [Courtesy: Peter Della Penna]

In George Mason’s second match of the day, they lost to Auburn by 38 runs in another solid performance by the Tigers. Auburn captain Naveen Thiagarajan top scored for the second day in a row, scoring 34 as part of a 57-run opening stand in Auburn’s total of 139 for 8 in 20 overs.

“We couldn’t have asked for more,” said Thiagarajan about his team’s two wins in two matches. “It’s been tremendous, except that we could have held on to more number of catches. We’re doing well and we’re happy about it. Sameer Shah bowled excellently and credit goes to all the boys who have played excellently throughout this tournament so far.”

Shah ripped through the Patriots batting card with his left arm pace to finish with 4 for 25, helping to bowl GMU out for 101 in 17.4 overs.

“When I was practicing back home in Auburn, the ball was going pretty fast and I was feeling confident about my bowling,” said Shah. “Conditions here are favoring me and I’m bowling pretty fast and I hope to increase the pace next match.”

Defending tournament champion Montgomery College looked impressive in a nine-wicket win over George Washington. Four Montgomery bowlers shared two wickets each to hold GWU to 108 for 8 in 20 overs. Ishaan Prakash was the lone bright spot for the Colonials with 54, half his team’s total. Ankit Sehgal then registered a crisp half-century to chase down the target in 10.5 overs. Sehgal creamed nine boundaries before ending the match with a six over midwicket to finish 50 not out.

“Last year, I didn’t even score above 35,” said Sehgal. “Last year, I just gave my wicket in all the matches. I got a good start, but was not able to finish it well. So this time I really prepared for it. It was a good start for me and I’m happy.”

ACC SBC Day 2 - Renaldo Arthur from UWI from Peter Della Penna on Vimeo.

Montgomery played their second match of the day against University of the West Indies, whose team hails from Barbados, and didn’t back down against the most talented team in the competition, scoring 187 for 3 after being sent in to bat. Montgomery captain Adil Bhatti scored 60 not out with four fours and three sixes while Sehgal chipped in with 49.

“We gave them a good target and I thought it would be good enough to get us a win, but unfortunately not,” said Bhatti. The longer Sehgal and Bhatti stayed at the wicket, more and more bouncers were sent down by UWI’s bowlers in the spirit of the old West Indies pace attacks.

“That was fun at the end,” said Bhatti. “At the end, I pulled the one for a six so I liked it. It was fun playing with them, a good experience.”

UWI then chased down the runs in 17.1 overs. Renaldo Arthur blasted Montgomery’s tired bowlers for 68 not out with four fours and two sixes while former West Indies U-19 player Barrington Yearwood iced the game, hooking a boundary to fine leg to finish 60 not out having hit three fours and five sixes in his innings.

Pic (Right): Bilal Javed of George Mason shows off his team's impressive kit. George Mason's players raised funds and found sponsors by themselves to cover the cost of their kit and some tournament expenses. Their team is still not officially recognized as a club sport at GMU and therefore receives no university funding. [Courtesy: Peter Della Penna]

In a somewhat controversial affair, Boston University lost by four wickets with two balls to spare against NYU-Poly. All three matches played on Central Broward Regional Park field two were done without an official scorer as the designated scorer for the field failed to show up. As a result, the teams scored the match themselves and a dispute resulted with BU in the field as they did not agree with how NYU-Poly was scoring their chase of 124. There were no disputes in the two games that George Mason played on the field against UMBC and Auburn, but that was not the case between BU and NYU-Poly.

“The first thing is you should not ask us to score when our team is batting. That’s not fair in a tournament because there is a bias already in there,” said BU player Bhupi Nagpure. “Second thing is, when you are asked, you should have a third neutral party who should be keeping score.”

“The real issue here is that the entire integrity, everything about this tournament and what it’s supposed to be about is just completely broken because you’ve got two teams keeping track of their own score and you can’t take anything seriously,” said BU player Vidit Munshi. “It’s like a pickup hoops game pretty much.”

NYU-Poly captain and Atlantic Region senior player Adrian Gordon felt his team scored fairly, but said that he was not really comfortable even starting the match without a neutral scorer.

“I hope we have a good scorer next time,” said Gordon. “I hope that he doesn’t depend on us to score so I hope we have an official scorer.”

As for the matches at Brian Piccolo Park in Cooper City, St. Cloud State defeated Minnesota but fell later in the day to York University from Toronto and Ohio State beat College of Wooster in the three matches played on artificial turf wickets. Khushro Wadia of York University recorded the highest individual score of the tournament so far with 78 out of York’s first innings total of 188 before Ahmad Malik took six wickets for York to roll over SCSU’s order. Saminda Siriwardena, a 2009 USA U-19 Second-Team All-American from the Central East Region, scored 60 not out for St. Cloud State in their win over Minnesota.

In the first match played on the natural turf wickets at Brian Piccolo, York College (NY) defeated University of Pennsylvania. York got a boost from their trump card, 22-year-old former USA senior squad and USA U-19 player Akeem Dodson, who notched 62 runs on a surface few players in the tournament have had a chance to play on. In the second match, USC defeated Miami (Fla.) to give the Trojans their second win on the day. USC’s experience paid off as the Trojans compete in Division Two of the Southern California Cricket Association competition. As a result, the squad gets a load of experience playing on the turf wickets of the Woodley Cricket Complex in Van Nuys, Calif., just outside of Los Angeles.

ACC SBC Day 2 - Renaldo Arthur from UWI from Peter Della Penna on Vimeo.

Thirteen matches are scheduled for Friday between Brian Piccolo Park and Central Broward Regional Park, including three matches on the ICC approved stadium turf wicket. As conditions permit, the final match of the day, USC vs. University of the West Indies, will be covered with live ball-by-ball coverage on Dreamcricket.com beginning at 4 pm EST on Friday from inside the stadium.