JIM MORGAN VOTED THE TOURNAMENTS MVP
Spain´s wicket-keeper captain Jim Morgan was voted the most valuable player in the recent ICC Division 2 tournament
Jim, who featured in all 7 of Spains games accrued a collective total of 573 points, well clear of his main rivals Amir Iqbal of Belgium (501 points) and Gareth Morris of the Isle of Man (476 points). Shafique Ali and Tanveer Iqbal also had good tournaments finishing 12th and 13th respectively in the MVP section.
Morgan contributed heavily in all the games he played. In the opener against Sweden he scored 70 to help Spain to a comfortable victory. Against Malta he took 4 catches behind the stumps and in the loss to Austria he hit a fantastic 71 in vain.
In the next match against Greece he hit 22 runs and took 1 catch and in the loss to Belgium he scored 27 and took 2 stumpings and a catch behind the wicket.
In the play off game, he relinquished the gloves to Shafique Ali to give the Spanish more depth in the outfield. Luxembourg was probrably his least successful game, although he still managed 24 and put the Spaniards well on the way to victory.
In the final game against Greece he took a stunning catch at mid off, kept his cool to run out one of the Greek dangermen Manousis and scored 15 with the bat to ensure he reached double figures in every innings he played.
He also had the 10th and 11th best individual scores in the tournament, although the top score by a Spanish batsman in the tournament was Shafique Ali, who finished in 9th place for his 72 against Malta at Mechelen.
Jim also finished 2cd in the top aggregate scorer behind Gareth Morris of the Isle of Man. Morgan finished with a total of 244 runs from the torneo for an average of 34.86 for each innings. Shafique Ali finished 7th with an average of 28.14.
Farhat Mahmood and Shafique Ali had the top strike rates for Spain (80 runs, 4 innings) with Farhat finishing in 6th place (154.72) and Shafique Ali in 7th (153.91)
The top wicket taker for Spin in the torneo was Talat Nadeem Ali who bagged 10 victims, 4 shy of the tournaments top wicket taker Andrew Naudi of Malta. Talats opening strike bowler Tanveer Iqbal also took 9 wickets at an average of 16.89 to finish 10th in the top wicket takers. Finally in this section Farhat Mahmood finished 15th with 8 wickets and an average of 16.75 from his 22 overs.
Talat Nadeem topped the best bowling in an innings section for his excellent effort of 5-13 against Malta. Tanveer Iqbal’s 3 wickets for 2 runs in the same game secured him 12th spot and Mohib Hussein´s effort of 3-13 in the last game against Greece earned him 16th place in the best bowling in an innings leaderboard.
Economy wise Spain had four bowlers in the top 14. Ranking 3rd was Mohib Hussein, who id not ball one wide all tournament, with an economy rate of 4.94. In 8th and 11th were Farhat Mahmood and Tanveer Iqbal, who finished with rates of 6.09 and 6.33 respectively, and just sneaking in at 14 is Talat Nadeem with an economy rate of 6.46.
In the wicket keeper category Jim Morgan finished second despite only taking 5 games behind the stumps. He took a total of 7 catches and 3 stumpings, to finish one behind the Belgian wicket keeper Ali Raza, who kept in all 7 games for his time.
Finally, the last words on an incredibly frustrating tournament for Spain are given to the Spanish coach Bobby Denning, who summed up the tournament like so…
“A hugely disappointing week which saw us win 5 out of our 7 games and fail to achieve what we have been working towards. For that I am deeply disappointed. The side is very capable of playing in Division 1 and on paper was the best side this week and for most of the week we have proved this either batting or bowling first and achieving our targets for 5 of the 7 games. We achieved our targets for the first half of the 2 games we lost. There is not a team in the competition that isn’t surprised that we have not reached the final. The fact remains however that we have again fallen short, despite the confidence we had coming into the week following on from our preparations”.
