CHANDIGARH, JULY 24 :The 15th All- India J. P. Atray Memorial Cricket Tournament will be played here from September 17 to 30. The matches will be played at the PCA Stadium, Mohali, Sector 16Stadium, Chandiarh, DAV School, Sector 8, Chandigarh and St. John’s School, Sector-26. The tournament is the curtain raiser before start of the domestic season and is recognized by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
Organising Secretary Captain Sushil Kapoor said that 16 top teams would compete in the tournament which will be played on league-cum- knock out basis. All matches will be of 50 overs each side and will be played under the ICC rules of one-day cricket. The teams will be divided into four pools and top team from each pool will qualify for the semi-finals. There will be a play off for the third and fourth position also.
The likely participating teams are last year’s winners MRF, Chennai, runners-up State Bank of Mysore, Bangalore, Punjab Cricket Club, PCA Colts, ONGC- Delhi, MPCA, Mumbai CA, Rajasthan CA, , Air India, Mumbai, BPCL, Mumbai, Canara Bank, Bangalore, HPCA, LIC Cricket Club, Chandigarh. Apart from this three new teams like Assam Cricket Association, India Cements Ltd, Chennai and IPL outfit Delhi Daredevils are likely to participate.
The winners will get a purse of Rs.1.50 lakh, runners-up Rs.60,000, the third position Rs.30,000 and fourth position Rs.15,000. Arrangements have been finalised with Doordarshan, New Delhi for live telecast of the day/night final match which will be played at PCA Stadium, Mohali.
Top drawer Indian players namely Pankaj Dharmani, VRV Singh, Sidharth Trivedi, Naman Ojha, Pankaj Singh, Manpreet Goni, Wilkin Mota, Iqbal Abdulah, Abhisekh Nair, Tilak Nayudu, Rajesh Pawar, Tanmay Srivastava, Pinal Shah, Sunny Sohal, Ravneet Ricky, Karan Goel, Gagandeep Singh, Uday Kaul, Sidharth Kaul, Taruwar Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, Sarandeep Singh, Ajay Ratra, Amit Mishra, Mithun Minhas, Amit Bhandari, Venugopal Rao, Daniel Manohar, Virat Kohli, Saurab Tiwari and Swapnil Hazare will be seen in action.