WCL Division 5 Round up
The German Men's cricket team took part in the World Cricket League Div.5 tournament held in Benoni, Southafrica from Sep 3rd - Sep 10th 2017. Blackcaps BL Captain Venkatraman Ganesan represented Germany in this tournament. Germany finished 5th among 8 teams.
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Germany qualified to the World Cricket League Division 5 by virtue of winning the European Division 1 tournament held in Netherlands in June 2017. Germany were grouped together with Ghana, Jersey and Vanuatu and the other group comprised of Guernsey, Cayman Islands, Qatar and Italy. The tournament format is such that the top 2 teams will get promoted for Div.4 and the 3rd placed team will retain their position in Division 5 with the remaining 5 teams getting relegated to regional qualifiers.
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Germany began on a positive note defeating Ghana in a low scoring thriller, before losing to Jersey and Vanuatu. Jersey won all 3 games which left Germany, Ghana and Vanuatu with one win each, but by virtue of a better NRR, Vanuatu advanced to the semi-finals along with Jersey. Having narrowly missed out on a semifinal berth Germany had to now play for places and it was critically important to finish as high as possible as this reflects on the ranking for the next tournaments. Germany responded extremely well to the set back and defeated Cayman Islands and Guernsey to earn a respectable 5th place in the tournament.
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The highlight of the last 2 games was the performance of Blackcaps skipper Venkatraman Ganesan who won back to back Man of the Match awards. He took 2/27 and scored 59 runs against Cayman Islands and went one step better against Guernsey with a stellar performance of 1/31 and 123* with the bat of just 111 balls, steering a chase of 270. He ended up with a batting average of 182 with the bat and was the second highest run getter for Germany despite playing only 2 games. He was also the only batsman to score a century for Germany in the tournament.
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Scorecard Link against Cayman Islands:
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Scorecard Link against Guernsey:
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