(Top) Title sponsor Sankar Narayana and, Srinivas Vemulapalli (in blue T-shirt) with the finalists.
(Below) The winners Anubhav Jain, Amit Bhatnagar, ,Navneet Narula, Shravan Vellanki holding their trophies.

Vibha has done it again!! Known in the community for its innovative fund-raisers to raise awareness and funds for child development projects in India, Vibha (http://atlanta.vibha.org) organized - for the first time in the History of Atlanta – the Omnisoft Double Wicket Cricket Tournament on July 31. The “Punjab Paawars”Amit Bhatnagar and Navneet Narula won the tournament “paawerfully” with a flurry of sixes and fours in each and every round. The runners up team of Anubhav Jain and Sravan Vellanki reached the final round comfortably before being outscored by the winners.

Following the success of the 8-a-side cricket tournament in May that has become a standard feature in every cricket enthusiast’s calendar in Atlanta, Vibha started a second tournament this year. And once again, the love of the game and the sensitivity to the cause of Vibha brought the Cricket loving fraternity to the tournament and made it a huge success! “I can not thank the players enough who stick to the schedule and make the job a pleasure for Vibha volunteers organizing this tournament year after year” said Srinivas Vemulapalli, the main coordinator for Vibha Cricket.

The Rain-Gods gave a break for Vibha cricket, but the Sun was so furious, with the temperature in the 90+ range for most of the day, that it brought memories of playing gully cricket in hot Indian summer. A tradition at all Vibha events, with the motto of “rain or shine”, the matches started promptly at 8 am. As the day progressed, the day got really hot, and so did the level of competition. By the time the finals was finished at 9 pm, in the beautiful flood-lit astro-Turf arena in the Georgia Tech campus, with the majestic skyline of Atlanta as the backdrop in fading sunlight, the four teams that played the final round were exhausted, but thrilled to be a part of it.

Since each team comprises of only two players, the entire tournament was played in an exciting format. Each pool consisted of 4 teams and all the four teams competed against each other at the same time. This meant that an opponent in one over became a partner in the next over. It was quite exciting to watch the changing dynamics and this could be an excellent example for a team building exercise. 

Since there is no concept of getting “out”, with the team losing six runs for each out, the bat was swung wildly throughout the day, resulting in a barrage of sixes and fours. In the 216 overs bowled in the tournament, the ball crossed the fence more than 450 times, about 150 of them being massive sixers. That is more than twice an over!! Sure enough, there were some negative scores, with the runs scored being not enough to make up for the number of times they got out. 

All the four teams reaching the finals had a distinction – Pawan and Ravi played an unbelievable 96 overs by the end of the day and they showed their sporting spirit till the last ball of the day. Vijay and Arpit made the highest score of the tournament with 97 runs from six overs in their second round match without loosing a wicket. Sravan Vellanki took the only hat-trick of the tournament with his mix of medium pace and off-cutters. Anubhav Jain, winner of the 2001 Vibha Cricket tournament proved that he is getting better with age, with his huge pulls over mid-wicket for a number of sixes, taking his team’s net score to 64. But the final round was completely dominated by the ultimate winners Amit and Navneeth, who did a terrific job both with the bat and the ball, scoring a net score of 84 runs in six overs.

Ultimately, the day belonged to the children in India, for whose benefit Vibha continues to organize the fund-raisers at regular intervals. For a complete list of projects supported by Vibha, please visit www.vibha.org/projects. Narayana Rekapalli, the President of Omnisoft (www.omnisoftonline.com), the title sponsor for the Tournament, noted that the reason his company is sponsoring Vibha’s efforts is because it aligns with his personal intention to help the underprivileged in India. 

The volunteers of Vibha thank all the players, food sponsor Amrutha Restaurant, the sponsors and the supporters for making it a huge success and look forward to their continued support for the Sixth Annual Vibha 5K Walk/Run, to be held on Sept 25th at Georgia Tech campus. Please visit http://atlanta.vibha.org/vibhawalk for more details.