RNW Annual Awards Nite 2011

We held our very first RNW Annual Awards Nite 2011 yesterday at TNCA Club. As with the tradition of RNW, it was a total success. Most of them turned up and we all had an excellent night to remember by. During this function, a lot of awards were given and they are as follows:

Best Captains by Year

• 2007 - V Sriram
• 2008 - 2009 - Anba
• 2010 - Guna
• 2011 - Bala

Man Of the Match (MOM) for the Wildcat Series

• First Match - Adi for his captaincy knock of 58 (59) and Ram for his excellent 4-27 haul
• Second Match  - Bala for his unbeaten, match-winning performance of 55* (34) not out innings
• Third Match  - Bala once again for his superb knock of 67 (59)
• Fourth Match  - Viru for his maiden and match winning knock of 62 (46)
• Fifth Match  - Sankar for his best spell and first 5 wicket haul in the series - 5-17

Man Of the Series (MOS) for the Wildcat Series

• Sankar for his excellent overall performance which included 13 wickets, @ avg. 7.53, Econ: 3.69 and strike rate of 12.29 balls

Best Batsman of the Year

• KK for excellent performance which demoralized every other bowler

Best Bowler of the Year

• Praveen for his terrific spin bowling which left batsman defenseless

Best Fielder of the Year

• Bala for his usual excellent performance on the field taking the best catches in the field

Best New Comer of the Year

• Ram - Proving everyone why he belonged in the field

Most Valuable Player of the Year went to 

• KK for his all round performance with both bat and ball.

Prabhu, the young and budding film director among RNW, complied an excellent video to summarize the rise of RNW as a club which was shown during the event.

I have to say as an short film enthusiast myself, I was both in awe and a bit jealous at the level of creativity this guy has. Kudos Prabhu!

I congratulate all the participants who won these awards during this function and I am going to ensure that my name is also there in that list, next year. Can't wait enough for 2012 to begin!

The Wid Hunt Ends: RnW Jags Knocks RnW Pumas with a 4-1 Victory!

The RnW cricketing year is generally very packed. We are either playing tournaments or some practice matches with equal intensity. So most of the time we are seriously focussed on notching those victories up in the Chennai cricketing circle. Couple of times a year, we also focus our guns on our counterparts in Bangalore! :) That's also the only time when we have an united RnW Chennai team facing Bangalore. More often than not, we are seriously trying to win having fun. The bottomline though being that we enjoy our cricket! 

And that's exactly what happened during this Wildcats Series. We enjoyed the game we love the most for nearly two months (16th Oct to 4th Dec), 5 Sundays, close to 300 overs of pure and pristine cricket. This series was meant to be a space where we see people do what they love doing rather than focus on what is best for the team. And true to that, this series was awesome!

Let us see a few statistics concerning this series. (You know you have Sankar to thank for this!) 

Top 5 Batsmen across both the teams (Most runs scored): 

1. Bala - 168
2. Viru - 128
3. Anba - 88
4. Adi - 82
5. Sriram - 76 

Top 5 Batsmen in Jaguars (Most runs scored): 

1. Bala - 168
2. Viru - 128
3. Anba - 88
4. KK - 72
5. Karthi - 47

Top 5 Batsmen in Pumas (Most runs scored): 

1. Adi - 82
2. Sriram - 76
3. Murali - 66
4. Jayanth - 49
5. Rakesh - 47

This series saw only four fifties of which two came from Bala's bat. There was only one from Pumas and that was by me. But, there were eight scores in the range of 30 to 50 which is a significant contribution in a 30-over game. Of these, five came from the Jags. Overall, the Jags showed greater responsibility at the crease and it shows in the statistics. Top 5 of Pumas scored 305 among them and the top 2 of Jaguars alone scored 296!       

Special mention must be made of Viru. The way he bludgeoned the Pumas' bowlers was absolutely demoralizing. I ran out of options to confront him with. But looking at it as talent in RnW, it was very encouraging.

Top 5 Bowlers across the teams (Most wickets taken): 

1. Sankar - 13
2. Ram - 8
3. Pradeep - 7
4. Praveen - 6
5. Murali - 5

Top 5 Bowlers in Jaguars (Most wickets taken):  

1. Sankar - 13
2. Pradeep - 7
3. Praveen - 6
4. KK - 4
5. Shrinivas Iyer - 4

Top 5 Bowlers in Pumas (Most wickets taken):

1. Ram - 8
2. Murali - 5
3. Subbu - 4
4. Umapathy - 4
5. JP - 3
6. Mani - 3

Sankar was the pick of the bowlers in this series. He bowled with great intelligence. Maintained the irritating pace that got on the nerves of Pumas' batsmen. Was tough to get away for runs. And in my opinion, he has been the single biggest revelation of this series. Turning into an all rounder! :) Invaluable asset to any team. And just to connect this to the purpose of this series, I think this defines "grabbing your opportunity". Very well done, Sankar! 

Overall

 

The series went off well. It went well above my expectations. If you went back a bit in time and saw this as a 5-match series during the months of October and November, you might have laughed it off. We had around 10 people turning up for nets and rains were lashing the city so hard that it was tough to even walk down any decent road. But now, two months down the line, we have come to a point from where we know clearly that there are two extremely talented and distinct teams. Some grabbed their opportunities, some are waiting for more. Nevertheless, the series has been a success. Wildcats Series is where Opportunity knocks again! And again!  

The success of this series will be measured by the progress shown by these teams in the months to come. And I am sure RnW will script a fantastic and successful 2012.

 

This post is written by Adi (with few modifications). 

Wild Cats Trophy - The Hunt Begins...

Before I begin with the news of Wild Cat Trophy, I feel that I should give a re-cap of this year season:


It has been an exciting year for Runs N Wickets. We started of this series with a positive note. RnW Jaguars reached semi finals in CSCA tournament whereas RnW Pumas won 5 consecutive matches in their tournament. This year was also witness to Anba, KK, Sankar, Pradyot and others flourishing nicely and getting better with their batting. Bowlers such as Bala, DD, Viji and Moraji also tuned their bowling skills picking up wickets in regular intervals. The most important feat was beating RnW Bangalore in home ground (Marina turf wicket). It was an awesome display of excellent bowling. Bala, Captain of RnW Jags, led from the front and ensured the rolling cup stayed with Chennai team. 

Wild Cats Trophy:

With the recap over, I am happy to announce that we are going to have the first set of matches for the 'Wild Cat Trophy'. There are a lot of new talent joined our team and this is an excellent opportunity to lead and show what they are made of. 


On personal front, I hope that I am able to make good score and finally get hold of my elusive '50' in this tournament and also keep better behind the wickets and add at least 5 wickets to my name. Runwees, go and ensure your availability for this Wild Cat Trophy because I feel this is going to be crazier than the last time :)


To register for the RnW Wild Cat Trophy, click here. 


Are you a cricket enthusiast who thinks that playing cricket is better than just watching? If so, sign up with us.

Runwees Calendar of Events

Tentative Guideline:

Winter (Sep through Jan): Wild cats trophy and nets sessions

Feb/Mar: Runwees Trophy ( Runwees Chennai Vs Bangalore series)

Feb/Mar: DWT ( Double Wicket tournament 1)

Summer (April through Aug) through: 30 over League Tournament

Jul/Aug: Runwees Trophy ( Runwees Chennai Vs Bangalore series) - Return match

Sep: DWT ( Double Wicket tournament 2)

Sunday is Funday at RnW

This is a fun place. This is a serious fun place!! This is a serious fun place for cricket enthusiasts!!!

It has been a place where we all have come-in as players and we started playing together more as friends. Each of us actually started celebrating others success and a strong desire to see others to score well and perform. We had our best days, worst days on field but we kept playing or practicing YoY without break on all Sundays for the last 3+ years. That was our interest levels.

We have a very open stance in all matters and strive to keep it nice and clean all times. Just three principles or point of consideration, if you want to call it, we have manitained so far:

1. Nets availability. Players who have maintained consistency for sessions.
2. Exclusivity to RnW. Players who play only with RnW.
3. Performance. We have a e-scorecard and a MVP (Most valuable player point system).

This will remain till it is proven ineffective ;)

Wish to have this fun continue....

Anba.

Latest Update from CSCA Tournament

Well, finally I got time to post this. Below is the scorecard from the latest CSCA tournament match. RNW Jags played against ICICI and won convincingly with a bonus point to boot! It was just a splendid performance all-round. Sankar played a brilliant knock of 54*(55) with a S/R of 98.18.

But the star of the match and MOM (Man Of the Match) was undoubtedly Praveen with 4/17 with one maiden over. Right now RNW Jags has 10 points from 3 games with 2 wins and 1 loss. Awesome performance!

With the recent win over RNW Bangalore, RNW Jags are hitting the strides nicely and hopefully I will be able to blog that RNW Jags won its first tournament cup in the coming weeks.

Below are the scorecards for your enjoyment!

ICIC Innings scorecard

RNW Jags Bowling scorecard

RNW Jags Innings scorecard

ICICI Bowling scorecard

Get Ready for a Wild Adventure - Wild Cats Trophy

After a good DW Tournament, I am happy to say we are starting off with an one-off match christened as 'WildCats Trophy'. This would be a series of intra-RnW matches which be held during the course of couple of months. Two teams has been formed - RnW Jaguar and RnW Puma. The first match is being held in Military Grounds, Pallavaram, Chennai, India (same as DW Tournament).

I shall update as soon as I know the match timings and playing 11.

If you are interested in playing cricket, interested to spend one day in a week to sweat in the hot sun to play in a good game of cricket with friends, join us. 

Double Wicket Tournament 2011

Yes, you heard it right! Double Wicket Tournament 2011 is here. This year its going to be more exciting as well. After much debate and discussions, the Double Wicket Tournament or DWT as we call it is finally here. The venue is Military Grounds, Chennai (near Airport).

Date: 3rd April 2011 | Venue: Military Grounds, Chennai

The tournament organizers are Pradeep and Sankar.

The tournament starts at 9 a.m. Earlier, the organizers had planned it at 6 a.m. but due to the fact that tomorrow is an all important game - India vs Sri Lanka in World Cup 2011 Finals, we all felt it might be difficult to come early after all-night partying (touchwood) :)

The current set of teams are as below:

Group A	Group B
Subbu / Rajesh	Sriram / Aditya
Bala / Karthi	Suraj / Moraji
Bhargav / Vikram	Anba / Praveen (last year Runner's up)
Sankar / Pradeep	Giri / Sujith
Sharath / Prabhu	Velu / Giddy

The team fixtures is as follows:

Match	Batting	Bowling	Wicket keeper
1	Subbu/Rajesh	Bala/Karthi	Prabhu
2	Sriram/Aditya	Suraj/Moraji	Prabhu
3	Bala/Karthi	Bhargav/Vikram	Prabhu
4	Suraj/Moraji	Anba/Praveen	Prabhu
5	Bhargav/Vikram	Sankar/Pradeep	Prabhu
6	Anba/Praveen	Giri/Sujith	Suraj
7	Sankar/Pradeep	Sharath/Prabhu	Suraj
8	Giri/Sujith	Velu/Giddy	Suraj
9	Sharath/Prabhu	Subbu/Rajesh	Suraj
10	Velu/Giddy	Sriram/Aditya	Suraj

The match rules are as same as last year with few minor modifications. I have a strong feeling that its going to be explosive! I just can't wait for Sunday to come.

Who do you think will be this year Champion of DWT? Drop in your comments.

Related articles

• Ashwin patiently waits in the wings (espncricinfo.com)
• Muralitharan's fairy tale ending (hindu.com)

RunsnWickets in Deccan Chronicle

Our interview with Vipasha Sinha, from Deccan Chronicle is out and here is the proof below :

This has come out in Coimbatore print edition, so its not available in online yet.

So happy :) .... All Thanks to her and KK for making this happen.