The Edison Cricket Club celebrated its fifth year as a member club of the Cricket League of New Jersey on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 with an impressive banquet and award ceremony at the Akbar Restaurant in Edison.

The Edison Cricket Club celebrated its fifth year as a member club of the Cricket League of New Jersey on Sunday, November 9th, 2008 with an impressive banquet and award ceremony at the Akbar Restaurant in Edison. Mamta Narula, New Jersey's most popular desi radio host, was the host for the evening.

This year's banquet, in keeping with the club's tradition, was attended by playing members as well as honorary inductees of the club. The list of honorary members of the club comprises a virtual who's who of Edison Township including Mayor Jun H. Choi, who is the club's Honorary Chairman and Seema Singh, the President of the Asian Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Dr. Sudhanshu Prasad, Councilman of Edison Township, was the first inductee for 2008. Dr. Prasad who is Former Chairman of the JFK Hospital Department of Medicine, is also a Member of the Edison Advisory Committee on Economic Development.

Also inducted were Alka Agrawal, the COO and co-founder of EBC Radio and Sunil Hali, CEO of CineMaya and publisher of The Indian Express, Divya Bhaskar, Sher-e-Punjab, Tamil Times and Telugu Times in North America.

Dr. Prasad, a respected internist in New Jersey, said that he was a big admirer of Sir Garfield Sobers and Rohan Kanhai throughout his college years. He thanked the Edison Cricket Club for making him an honorary member of the club. He said that the invitation to join the club matched the joy he felt when he met and shook hands with his idols Sobers and Kanhai in London some years ago.

Ms. Alka Agrawal, co-founder and COO of EBC Radio which reaches over 400,000 listeners throughout the tri-state area spoke about her radio station, which hosts the longest running cricket talk show in USA. "We began our cricket programming with interactive analysis of the World Cup matches way back in 2003, and more recently, with our coverage of the NuWare NJ Twenty20, we became the first station in USA to provide live commentary."

Emphasizing that cricket was part of Indian culture, Ms. Agrawal said that EBC would continue to support Edison Cricket Club as well as the sport in New Jersey.

Accepting his honorary membership, Sunil Hali, CEO of CineMaya, said "Cricket was always my passion and everything else was just a chance."

"My parents told me that as long as I was at the top of my class, I could play any amount of cricket," the double gold medalist from IIT Roorkee said "and that is exactly what I did." Mr. Hali assured everyone present that his company had big plans for cricket in 2009 and he said Edison would be at the center of some international cricket action.

The three honorary inductees were presented with a bat inscribed with signatures of the other ECC members. Seema Singh welcomed new honorary members to the club. Reminiscing about her childhood when she spent many afternoons playing cricket with her brothers, Ms. Singh said that her personal goal as an ECC member was to form the first women's team for Edison. Ms. Singh reminded the audience that under her captaincy, her team had defeated Mayor Jun Choi's eleven at the ground opening ceremony in June.

Speaking about Edison Cricket Club's achievements in 2008, Atul Huckoo, President of the club said, "Thanks to our Mayor Jun Choi and Edison Township for giving us a cricket ground, that is a huge milestone for our club during 2008. On the field, we had a successful year in the league and we reached the semi-final of our division."

Mr. Huckoo thanked the club's many sponsors including Effexoft, State Bank of India, Vitamin Water, Indigo, Sunshine Foods, Signs By Tomorrow, and the main awards sponsor Emirates Airlines.

Venu Palaparthi, co-founder of DreamCricket.com was the keynote speaker. In a presentation that was both humorous and thought-provoking, Mr. Palaparthi described the sporting pyramid using US Soccer as an example. "Amateur soccer is the base of the pyramid. On top of that are third division, second division, first division leagues and then there is the top-level professional league - the MLS."

Calling USA cricket a one-layer blend of amateur and first division cricket, he said that the sport's progress would depend on the build-out of the entire cricket pyramid.

Mr. Palaparthi spoke highly of the contribution of America and Americans including the Mark Mascarenhas, Sir John Paul Getty, Allen Stanford, and more recently, Lalit Modi, the Indian cricket administrator who is a Duke alumnus. He said that despite contributions of these individuals, not to forget that USA media rights contribute roughly $100 Million per year to the sport, USA was seemingly stuck in a rut receiving a paltry $120,000 for promotion of the sport in USA.

Instead of despairing the lack of assistance, he urged everyone to do more to elevate cricket and attract sponsors. "Until 2008, cricket was beaten hollow by every sport in USA in terms of sponsorships. Even wife-carrying competitions had big-name sponsors like Budweiser in USA," Palaparthi said. "But that has changed in 2008. DreamCricket's inaugural Twenty20 tournament was sponsored by NuWare, Reebok, CitiNRI and Smith Barney, among others." He added that "everyone should emulate Edison Cricket Club, the most successful club in USA terms of its marketing efforts."

Mr. Palaparthi said that he personally drew inspiration from Sunil Gulati, the Indian-American who is the current President of US Soccer Federation. Mr. Gulati is widely regarded as the single most important person in the development of soccer in USA. Comparing cricket today with soccer in 1994 after the FIFA World Cup, he said that cricket was at a similar point of inflection post IPL.

"Mr. Gulati said many years ago in the context of soccer and I quote 'Those (European) leagues are second to none except to each other. But you can have a pretty darn good league (in USA) with a population of 300 million people and just some international players.'"

"The same can be said of cricket," Mr. Palaparthi said while presenting his Vision 2020 for cricket.

The well-planned and precisely executed ECC event included entertainment by Pooja who presented some foot-tapping bollywood numbers including the anthem from Chak De India.

In a glittering award ceremony that followed, awards were presented by the following eminent guests: Seema Singh, former Rate Payer Advocate and President of AICC; Akbar Hussain, National Sales Manager of Emirates Airlines; Prasad Kunisetty, CEO of TeluguPeople.com and Effexoft; Ms. Krishnan of Signs By Tomorrow; and Raja Shah of Diamond Essence; Dave Majumdar of Western Union; Hemant Mirchandani of Indus American Bank. All the sponsors assured ECC of their continued support. The following members of the Edison Cricket Club and Cricket League of New Jersey won the Emirates Cricket Awards at the ceremony:

1. Vipul Patel: Emirates Best Bowler / 5 wicket haul
2. Fahad Sultan: Emirates Best Batsman, Player of the series and 5 wicket Haul
3. Sriram Srinivasan: Emirates Best All Rounder
4. Santosh Kumar: Emirates Ambassador of ECC
5. Srikanth Vadlamudi: Emirates Emerging Player
6. Shailesh Patel: Emirates Best Umpire
7. Emirates Spirit of Cricket Award: Mavericks CC
8. Emirates Cricket Ambassador Award: Edison Park District