By Peter Della Penna
\nCanadian national team player Zubin Surkari top scored with 40 to lead Toronto Cricket Club\u2019s chase of 117 as they defeated Sarasota International Cricket Club by seven wickets on Sunday at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in the final of the 19th annual Philadelphia International Cricket Festival. Sarasota\u2019s first innings total of 116 for 7 in 20 overs was never going to be enough against the batting firepower of Toronto, who reached the target in 15.1 overs.
\n\u201cWe have a lot of good players that came this year,\u201d said Toronto CC captain Hassan Choghtai. \u201cThe Canadian captain Ashish Bagai and Zubin Surkari, who just played in the World Cup, a couple of former Canadian players and Under-19 players. We had a pretty strong team so that was the reason for the success.\u201d
\n\u201cWe play with full intensity and we play to win. Although it\u2019s a festival game, we just come here to play hard, play good cricket and win it so it\u2019s more fun.\u201d
\nChoghtai accepted the winner\u2019s trophy from former Indian Test cricketer Sunil Joshi, this year\u2019s VIP guest. Choghtai says it\u2019s the great facilities on offer in Philadelphia, in addition to the chance to mingle with players like Joshi, that make it an easy choice to keep on coming back each year.
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\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if there\u2019s grounds like this or clubhouses like this anywhere in North America,\u201d said Choghtai. \u201cIt\u2019s great grounds, the wickets are a little tricky, but all the grounds have good outfields. You get value for your shots. Good people, you get to meet the VIP every year which is a pretty awesome thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joshi was delighted with the experience he had at the festival on many levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the 19th year the organizers have conducted this sports festival and being the first Indian to have been invited to grace the occasion makes me feel very proud and privileged because if you look at the players who have come here as a guest of honor, my childhood hero Garry Sobers, I couldn\u2019t have refused this great event to come over here and grace the occasion,\u201d said Joshi.<\/p>\n
Players like Mark Boucher and Jonty Rhodes established a tradition of playing alongside the members of many of the clubs, particularly the Philadelphia area teams. Joshi played in four matches this year and was excited by the mix of talent on offer, particularly the fact that there were more than a few Americans in the teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are quite a few Americans,\u201d said Joshi. \u201cI had seen the Under-19 guy Kalim [Ahmed]. I played alongside him yesterday with the British Officers Club. He\u2019s a young upcoming left arm seamer. I was very happy to see someone being an American playing cricket. It was great.\u201d Among others, ICC Americas Under-19 tournament MVP Cameron Mirza also played in the tournament for Indoor Cricket Rising Stars. Current Canada Under-19 player Kyle Edghill also played for the champion Toronto CC squad along with former Canada 2010 Under-19 World Cup squad member Arsalan Qadir.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe standard is fantastic,\u201d said Joshi. \u201cYou look at the players who have been playing for the Canadian team. A couple of players who took part in the 2011 World Cup, they\u2019ve been playing for the [Toronto] team.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore I came into the ground to look at these teams playing, I had my own reservations on these sorts of wickets, but the enthusiasm the cricketers have shown for the last three days, it\u2019s amazing. It\u2019s great to see these players playing and there\u2019s so many Americans, English, the Asians, the expats. It\u2019s a great event.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Peter Della Penna Canadian national team player Zubin Surkari top scored with 40 to lead Toronto Cricket Club\u2019s chase of 117 as they defeated Sarasota International Cricket Club by seven wickets on Sunday at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in the final of the 19th annual Philadelphia International Cricket Festival. Sarasota\u2019s first innings total of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1506,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1505\/revisions\/1506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadacricket.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}