Ruthless bowling from Karthik Meiyappan and Utarksh Srivastava saw Zayed Academy retain the U15 ARCH Cup, adding to their senior team’s victory in the U19 Trophy earlier in the week.
As well as the ADIB NSL victors, the ARCH Cup also featured the ICC Academy and a number of the UK’s prestigious schools including Eton College, Hampton School, Ipswich School, King Edward’s School Birmingham and St John’s Leatherhead. The full scorecards for the tournament, as well as all the individual player stats and the Dream Team can be found here: link. To register interest for the 2017 and 2018 ARCH Tournaments, visit our dedicated webpage here.
Chasing 200, aided by Tayyeb Ali’s half-century, Meiyappan (3-16) and Srivastava (2-19) did the damage with the ball as Zenith fell to a 119-run loss in the 40-over encounter in Dubai.
For Jonathan Figy, it was sweet revenge after being in the Abu Dhabi Indian School side that were defeated by Zenith in this season’s ADIB NSL, although that wasn’t on his mind.
“Our bowlers were spot on and I’m pretty happy with how we played although we still need to improve,” said the 14-year-old.
For Zenith, it was a brave show who had beaten English opposition to reach the final on their competition debut.
Captain and opener Niel Lobo said: “We got their top-order batsmen out quickly.
“But we didn’t think about the other batsmen and what they could do. I felt my batsmen should’ve taken more responsibility.”
Batting first, Zayed were restricted to 199-5 with Pradhyumana Jagdish taking two wickets.
With a challenging total, Zenith’s batsmen struggled with Glenn Fernandes top-scoring with 19. He was one of three batsmen to reach double figures as they scored 80.
