Ariy-El Boynton

The Jackrabbit cricket team dominated so much on Halloween weekend that SDSU did not need to play in a pre-semifinals match at the Mankato Tourney. The team bartered with an ISI team who should have been in their semifinals match-up. The Jacks picked Sri Lanka, while ISI picked the Superstars.

The Jacks beat their semifinals match-up by a large margin, and ISI also won.

Now, the talking was useless as SDSU and ISI played for the right to call themselves champions. The match-up was not even close. The Jacks beat ISI 117-77 to take the tournament in impressive fashion.

“We did it, and we did it as a great team,” said team adviser Chirag Shukla. “The last time we won was in 2004, and we had to try four years to see this great moment.”

In the opening rounds, the Jacks handled the Superstars, easily. SDSU only allowed the team 51 runs, and the Jacks won with eight overs in the match.

Some SDSU players knew they could handle any team in the field.

“Once we defeated the Superstars, we realized that we were one of the best teams in the tournament and were going to grab the winner’s trophy, ” said star-team member Sankar Kannadhason.

Once the final match-up was over, the Jacks celebrated with “all the team members gathered together, jumped, danced, hugged each other, shouted but none of them forgot to maintain the discipline and professional spirit of SDSU,” said Kannadhason.

The Jacks dominated the tournament out-scoring its opponents by more than 200 runs.

Due to playing many matches in a short amount of time, the team often had to go without sleep over the weekend but came out with the trophy, anyway. At times, the Jacks played secondary members in order to give players much needed rest.

According to team member Masi Hasan, every member on the team was important.

“Winning the Champion’s Trophy showed one thing for sure – unity. This was the most important reason we won. Right from the batsmen to the bowlers and even to the fielders,” he said. “All the individual efforts combined had an impact in winning the tournament.”

Kannadhason can be on a long list of Jacks who deserved to be named the MVP of the tournament for SDSU.

“He (Kannadhason) ran plenty of runs, bowled very well and also fielded in a difficult area,” Shukla said. “He pushed the other batsman to take more runs in the final, thereby giving the opponents a huge target to chase and making the bowlers’ task a little easy.”

Team members were extremely pleased by Kannadhason’s ability to get team members to practice throughout the summer outdoors and indoors at the DePuy Military Hall.

Kannadhason and Hasan said that without their team adviser’s presence, they would not have believed in themselves as much.

Shukla’s play was even more impressive by the mere fact that he had leg cramps, a throat infection, a cold and other aliments, which prevented him from being 100 percent healthy.

“His batting and bowling with incredible pace was simply awesome,” Kannadhason said.

SDSU members were very proud to be a part of this team.

“It was an honor wearing the SDSU shirt and playing among close friends and adding to that, winning the tournament was the perfect way to end it all,” Hasan said. “My congratulations to the team, and once again, it was an honor to be a part of the victorious SDSU 2008 team.”

One of their biggest challenges in the future is replacing a large number of players who will be gradating.

“The chances of victory may go down, but we will keep on being optimistic and train hard with the team we have,” said Shukla.

#1.882177:3993990995.jpg:cricket_courtesy2.jpg:Cricket player Chirag Shukla (far left) shows off his Best Bowler trophy from the Mankato Open. Other members of the team display Man-of-the-Match awards, along with the Victory Cup. :Courtesy Photo