Six teams in conjunction with Cricket España will participate in the inaugural Valencia Tapeball Cricket Tournament on May 28th. The one day contest will involve Puerto Zalmi, Ayora Qalandars, Mislate 11, Valencia Sultans, Badshah CC and Punjab XI Cricket Club..
Each team will have fifteen of their own members making up the squad with no “open players” allowed for this specific event. All matches will be six overs per side, with a minimum of five players from each side bowling.
The format will be two groups in the initial stages and then a crossover of the winners and runners up from Group A and Group B for the semi finals. The winners of the two semi-finals will be the finalists and play for the trophy and prize money.
Group A consists of Badshah, Mislata 11 and Puerto Zalma. Badshah have several key batsmen and bowlers who will be looking to take their team deep into the competition. In the batting deparetment captain Abdul Rauf will be heavily relied on. He will also be looking for support from Bilal Hussain, Sohail Nawaz and Ali Shah when at the crease. The bowling attack will look to Noman, Asad, Kami Raja and Hussain Raja to try and bag them some wickets.
Mislata 11, from a neighbourhood of Valencia, will look to captain Nasir and Shahid Bhatti to get them the runs required to progress. Ahmar with the ball will be an handful, and the all rounders Wajhat and Amir should chip in with runs and wickets to make them a definite threat.
Puerto Zalmi have the pedigree to go all the way in the competition. In Zain Warrich they have a devastating batsmen and if he can gel with his captain and fellow batter Rashid then you can expect good things from Zalmi. All rounders Waseem and Hassan and bowler Balawal are familiar with the tapeball game and will be looking to put their experience to good use throughout the day.
Group B pits Ayora Qalanders, Punjab 11 and Valencia Sultan together.
Ayora is another “barrio” of Valencia and the Qalanders have depth in their squad in all formats of the game. Captain Ali Zaib and the left handed Amir will be the cornerstone for the batting. Heavily loaded with all rounders could also work in their favour with Ajmal, Tariq, Mirza Tanver and Hedir being players to look out for.
Punjab 11 will rely on their captain Abid Bajjar to chaparone his very talented team. Batsmen Nadeem Javad, Usman Ali, Mirza Qasim and Suffan Ali are all matchwinners on their day, and bowlers Qaiser Mehmood, Hassan Ali and Muddassar Jahger are capable of getting their opponents out cheaply.
Valencia Sultans make up the final team in Group B. Shakeel Ansar will skipper the side and will look for support from all of his playes but especially Aqib Ali and Suleman Asghar in the respective batting and bowling roles. All rounders Adeel Akram and Ali Guijar should also figure prominently during the copurse of the tournament.
The event will start at 10am on Sunday the 28th of May and below is the official poster created by Chloé Rodriguez for the event. Good luck to all six of the Valencia teams in this competition.
