As Kid Rock sang in 'Picture' - 'I ain't seen the sunshine in 3 damn days... ' so it was in Detroit, and Toronto, for the Mid West Championship and the 2 days after. However the cricket went on. The teams came with mostly new players, Wayne State e.g had 9 of their 11 players being new, with Aditya Andhare being the only veteran. This is one of the great aspects of American College Cricket, new students coming and learning the culture, and becoming part of the family. At the same time it's always great to see the familiar faces.
The defending Mid West Champion, Wayne State's inexperience showed as it lost to Iowa State 77/7 vs 78/7 but the team was beginning to jell as it took their next game to an even closer finish, making 115 for 8 which Laurier only got in the final over. Some of the Iowa State players were playing their first 'hardball' game, and one debutant Sourabh Choudhari took 5 wickets in his 1st game.
The weekend was a bowlers' weekend and when Carnegie Mellon and Ryerson faced off Talha Kirmani (Ryerson) took 4 wickets but Ksijith took 4 for Carnegie to give them what might seem a surprise victory over the Canadian Champion. Ryerson went on the win their game vs Ohio State and make the Semis, despite devastating bowling by Ohio State's Krishna who took 4 wickets, including 3 clean bowled.
West Virginia, in their quest to win the Gordon Gee Trophy won vs Ohio State but couldn't get past Laurier so in the Final 4, Iowa State faced Laurier whilst Carnegie Mellon faced Laurier.
Rain caused the final day's matches to be reduced to 15 overs' games. Once more Laurier Golden Hawks defeated Iowa State Cyclones, this time easily. Carnegie Mellon amasses 155 for 3 in 15 overs, amazing since the 2nd highest score for the weekend was 126 for 8 in 20 overs. Advait Varadarjan (Carnegie) who had flown in that morning smashed a beautiful 51 not. Karthik Desai led the charge smashing 89 for Ryerson including 4 sixes in the last over for Ryerson to finish on 89 not out in 47 balls with 5 fours and 7 sixes.
The Final was another low scoring affair with Laurier being restricted to 84 for 8. They were able to defend this however due to good bowling by Hamza Yousafzai 3 for 8, and Captain Bashar Ashfaq 2 for 9 as Laurier took the Gordon Gee Trophy home to Waterloo, Canada.
Best Batsman for the Mid West Championship was Armaan Kapoor (Laurier) .Best Bowler was Kshitij Chauhan (Carnegie Mellon) and MVP was Kalpit Patel (Laurier).
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