Bleed Bhawanipur Blue – The BPLT concludes

The Bhawanipur Premier League Tournament (BPLT) turned three, creating in its waka a slew of records that are stuff that the dreams of scorers and trivia fans are made of. For one, it is certainly the biggest of its kind intra college, indoor cricket tournament in India, perhaps even in the world. The tournament was played out in record time. Not to mention record number of participants – a whooping six hundred and fifty, who were broken into one hundred and twenty-eight teams. Played in the knockout format, the tournament was a roller-coaster, which perhaps explained the huge crowd participation as class mates and friends were seen to root for their teams with a passion that is normally reserved for the men in blue.

Prof Dilip Shah, the Dean of Student affairs of the College formally opened the games with his characteristic words of encouragement while Dr Divyesh Shah, the head of the morning commerce section of the college and a keen cricketer himself explained the rules of engagement to the assembled captains, match conductors and organisers. The Tournament was open to all students irrespective of stream and year.

One match witnessed a team scoring a tournament record of four hundred and nineteen runs in a match. While on the other end of the spectrum, a team was bundled out for sixty-five on the board. The Tournament also witnessed another fantastic feat – the scoring of one hundred and fifty four runs in one single over, something that was made possible following the rules of indoor cricket. The preliminaries gave way to the quarter finals and the semi- finals and it was another record of sorts that the play off for the third position was as big a draw with the spectators as was the final.

In the end, the team led by Hritik Sindhi took the third position.

The finals were played out between the teams captained by Shivam Bajoria and Harsh Dhanuka. A nail-biter till the end, the match witnessed some intelligent bowling, calculated batting, a spirited run chase and some acrobatic fielding. Harsh Bajoria’s team edged past the competition to lift the BPLT 2018 trophy, a first among equals.

Equally well cheered was a match that was played out between the volunteers who were instrumental in pulling out a tournament of such magnitude involving logistics that were simple mindboggling. The credit goes to the team comprising of Waman Beriwal, Shikhar Tanvi, Karan Mundra and Vivek Patel. Kudos guys.

A round of applause is also reserved for Karan Mundra who regaled the audience with a live commentary of the proceedings of the final match and to the three umpires who officiated – Shree Khandelwal, Piyush Agarwal and Sahil Rathi. Vivek Patel and Nishant Daga – the scorers also performed their job commendably.

(This report has been filed by Nikita Mittal with cameraperson Shakib Shahrewar of the Expressions collective of the BESC)