Ft. Lauderdale - UMBC, captained by Rikin Parikh, wrapped up the American College Cricket Championship here on Sunday, defeating the University of South Florida by five wickets at the Central Broward Regional Park and Stadium.
The USF Bulls won the toss and elected to bat, but in the sixth over found themselves down four wickets, while only having scored 28 runs. The Bulls tried to rebuild their innings, but when top scorer Krunal Bhange (33) was caught out in the 13th over, quickly followed by a run out in the 14th, USF was clearly in trouble and finished its 20 overs with 107 runs.
In its innings, UMBC steadily built its total on the backs of two critical partnerships between Digant Samant and Raghav Bharadwaj (58 from 49) and Eraj Abidi and Anand Patel (35 from 46). By the time Bharadwaj was dismissed in the 18th over, only a few runs separated the scores, and this was quickly accomplished.
For the Retrievers, leading wicket takers were Gurnish Singh (3), Taha Memon (2) and Rikin Parikh (2). Doing the damage at the crease were Digant Samant (30), Raghav Bharadwaj (28) and Eraj Abidi (24).
Twenty-eight teams participated in the tournament, with the winner gaining the Chanderpaul Trophy. This is UMBC's first national title.
