International Match Manager Report for the 2013 season

Dear SCA members,

I am very happy to inform you that the National Team had a very busy and productive season in the year 2013. In terms of number of games it is probably the year after a long time where the national team has played 8 games:

• The year started with the David Barmes Memorial Trophy in April where the National Team convincingly defeated Geneva XI Stars CC by a huge margin.
• The next assignment was the International T20 series against Austria in June. Although the national team lost all the games, the experience gained from such tours is invaluable. I would specially like to thank the efforts of sFOCUS in organizing the umpires for these games and the efforts of Cossonay CC in providing us with their ground facilities.
• The team then travelled to UK to play against University of Sussex and I am very happy to inform you that the team performance was excellent and was able to defeat the University teams in the three games played there.
• The last assignment for the team was in Switzerland and against Stowe Occasional CC from UK in August and the national team has easily won the game.

The team win and loss ratio is 5:3 in the 2013 season.

Unfortunately we could not participate in the La Manga tournament like previous years as we could not get enough players willing to travel because of the high costs involved.
We have managed for the first time to organize a training session for all the potential National players. Clubs were invited to send the payers who they think were the best in their team. A very good response was received and around 30 players participated in the training session which was organized at the Cossonay cricket grounds.
Apart from the games a special emphasis was put on organising the player profiles and scorecards for the national team. A website on play-cricket.com was created to document all the scorecards and player profiles.

I would specially like to thank Mr. Abraham Koshy who was instrumental in selecting the teams and helping in organizing the training sessions and the games and Mr. Alex Mackay who helped me in organizing the scorecards, creating player profiles and updating the website regularly.

Finally coming to the proposed tours for 2014 we have the following trips confirmed:

1. April 2014: David Barmes Memorial Trophy
2. May 2014: Tour to Austria
3. June 2014: Zuoz Tournament
4. July 2014: Trip to UK to play against Warwickshire piligrims

Owing to other commitments, I will be stepping down from the post of International Match Manager in the forthcoming AGM to be held on February 1, 2014. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the past and the present SCA executive committee members for their fantastic support throughout my term as IMM. I would also like to thank all the member clubs, without whose support none of the tours above would have been possible.

Kind Regards
Asvin Lakkaraju