KUWAIT CITY, June 21: Kuwait Cricket (KC), the official body of govern-ing cricket in Kuwait in association with its principle partner IDP Education — official IELTS centre in Kuwait ended the historic domestic season with a bang over the weekend of 2nd and 3rd June at TACK Entertainment City Cricket Ground — Doha (TACK-TEC) & Sulaibiya Cricket Ground (SCG). With 110 unique cricket teams, as many as 2,500 players, 1,026 matches live on Kuwait cricket website and more than $50,000 in cash awards to the winning teams, runners up and individual per-formers throughout the season, it has undoubtedly been the best domestic sea-son that has changed the face of cricket in Kuwait and the interest amongst new teams and players is phenomenal.

As many as 9 T20 finals took place over an action packed weekend that saw the entire Kuwait Cricket fraternity including teams, players, officials and spectators enjoy the growth of domestic cricket with their respective families and friends like never before. KC-TMDL Edition 2 & KC-T20 premier league Edition 1 were the on-going cement and turf tournaments that concluded in a lively atmosphere created by DJ flames that kept the entire audience present at the ground fully entertained in both the venues of SCG & TACK-TEC.

KC — TMDL on cement saw as many as 40 teams spread across 4 divisions of A, B, C & D having played at 8 various desert grounds of Hateen, Sulaibikhat, Jleeb and Kabd where as KC-T20 Premier league on turf saw as many as 46 teams spread across 5 divisions of A, B, C, D, & E having played at both SCG & TACK-TEC over a period of 3 months and there-fore, it came as no surprise that the final-ists were more than ready for an epic grand finale.

Four out of the 9 mega finals took place on Thursday evening (2nd June) at TACK-TEC & SCG simultaneously with both the venues hosting two matches for the night whereas the remaining 5 finals were exclusively played on Firday (3rd June). Division E finals of KC-TMDL

was played between KRH CC and the 4th Dimension. KRH CC comfortably won the match by 35 runs with Shakil Kabir Ahmad being declared the man of the finals.

Division D finals of KC-TMDL was played between Smashers XI and Young Stars. Smashers XI living by their name smashed young stars 191 runs in the first innings and won the match by a huge margin of 71 runs with Sakheer Hussain being declared the man of the finals. Division C finals of KC-TMDL was played between Channels Media and Al Nida.

It was a closely fought game and in the end, Channels Media came out as victori-ous by 16 runs with Umer Slahuddin declared as the man of the finals. Division B finals of KC-TMDL were played between The Tigers CC and ACC-Kuwait. The Tigers CC held on to their nerves by chasing a small target of 117 runs with only 3 wickets in hand and the skipper Jolly Mathew was declared the man of the finals.

KC-T20 premier league division E final was played between a very passion-ate Indhrani Cricket Club and Titans CC. Batting first, Indhrani CC scored 159 runs and got Titans all out at 118 runs winning the match by 41 runs with Nagarju Bandla declared the man of the finals. Division D final of KC-T20 pre-mier league was played between Al Bader and SSH CC. Al Bader scored 133 runs batting first and SSH won the match by 6 wickets with Farook Ijaz declared as man of the finals.

Division C finals of KC-T20 premier league was played between Royal Kings and KGL cricket club. Royal Kings set a target of 147 runs for KGL batting first and KGL were short of 25 runs in their chase with Renil Raj of Royal Kings being declared the man of the finals. Division B finals were played between the famous Kuwait Hawks and the prom-ising Artech Cricket Club. ACC-Kuwait scored 180 runs batting first and Kuwait Hawks were bundled out for 130 runs. ACC-Kuwait were declared champions of division B with their star performer Aphsal walking away with the man of the finals award.

The grand division A finals was played between defending champions Aroma CC and a power packed AHS Punjab Cricket Club. By the time the grand divi-

sion A finals took centre stage, the audi-ence had settled in and were ready to witness the best players of Kuwait put up a show of boundaries and entertain them with their acrobatic fielding and energy throughout the 3 hours of play.

Ahs Punjab won the toss and chose to bat first. The dahsing khalid Butt got out early in the first over when Usman Waheed plucked a one hand blinder at mid on. However, the experienced Yaseen Mughal was at his Vintage best and smashed all the bowlers of Aroma all over the park with small contributions coming in from Adnan Idrees & skipper Saud Qamar. Yaseen Mughal missed out on a century and got out for a match win-ning 96 runs taking his teams total to a comfortable 191 runs. Aroma’s poor fielding added to the advantage of Yaseen as the veteran was dropped as many as 3 times by 3 different fielders.

Chasing a mammoth total of 198 runs, Aroma lost their star batsman Kashif early in the chase, followed by Usman, Asghar and Raveja which had the defend-ing champions reeling at 60 for 4. From there onwards, Aroma never seemed to come back in the game and after they lost the experienced Ahsan and Ali Talib, it was more or a less curtains for them.

Ahs Punjab won the finals comfortably in the end with Yaseen Mughal declared the deserving man of the finals. The cel-ebrations by Ahs Punjab and all other winning teams was a sight to see as hun-dreds of players danced away to the tradi-tional beats of Dhol celebrating a fantas-tic season for their respective teams before the Director of Domestic Cricket & Marketing, Sajid Ashraf started the proceedings with the presentation party.

It was undoubtedly a privilege for all the finalist teams and their respective players along with the entire Kuwait Cricket fraternity to have the chairman of the Kuwait Cricket Council, Emad Al Jassam grace the spectacular occasion with probably the loudest round of applause when he made an entry to the ground at the end of division A grand finale.

Similarly, earlier in the day, what brought a smile to many of the cricket enthusiasts was to see the visible return of the Vice President of Kuwait Cricket, Faisal Al Marzook to the cricket grounds after more than 10 years. Speaking exclu-sively with VOOP media, he declared that “the plans shared with me by the Director of Domestic Cricket & Marketing for Kuwait Cricket, are very impressive and cricket has grown heaps and bounds in the recent past and I am here to encourage this successful growth of Kuwait’s domestic cricket which is bound to take the national team of Kuwait to new heights of success similar to what Oman & UAE have been able to achieve in the region and it has always been my dream for as long as I can remember”.

Sajid Ashraf welcomed the presenta-tion party that had the chairman of the KC council Emad Al Jassam, managing partner of circle partners UK Harshith Vora, managing director of Burgan International Indra, TACK International President Mohammed Ashraf, council members Imran Hajji Mustafa (Director of Match officials) & Tahir Khan (Venue manager), organizing committee officials Rishi D Jayan (operations & website),

Robert D’souza (head of logistics), and Syed Hassan Abbas (technical commit-tee).

A vote of thanks was given to first, the General Secretary of Kuwait Cricket. Haider Farman as without his guidance and leadership, it would have not been possible to bring cricket under one roof in such a centralized and professional man-ner. The overwhelming support of princi-pal partners IDP — Official ielts centre in Kuwait was then recognized with a huge memento of appreciation , followed by season sponsors Kuwait Swedish (official logistics partner), Al Hafiz ( Official Print Solutions partner), Red Bull (offi-cial beverages partner) and Crowne Plaza (Official Hospitality Partner).

To continue with, the best individual performers across all divisions in the shape of best batsman, best bowler and best all rounder were announced and every single one of them walked away with a cash prize of $120. In total, as many as 27 individuals awards were given to all the best performers of Kuwait’s domestic cricket. KC T-20 Premier league best bowler award for Division A went to Abdullah Khan for future stars for most number of wickets, best batsman was given to Usman Waheed of Aroma CC for most number of runs, and best all rounder went to the evergreen Khalid Butt of Ahs Punjab.

In addition, as many as 50 people including the 18 match officials that offi-ciated the finals over the weekend headed by Imran Haji Mustafa, logistics staff, marketing executives, grounds staff, operations, website and other volunteers were called on to the stage in front of the capacity crowd with a huge round of applause and a gift of appreciation for all their extreme hard work and efforts in making the 2015 - 2016 season a grand success.

Finally, a photo shoot of all the final-ists with the dignitaries, council members and other officials was conducted. The director of domestic cricket and market-ing along with the chairman of the KC council Emad Al Jassam concluded the presentation party with a promise of hav-ing a bigger and better domestic season of 2016 — 2017 with more teams, more players, more sponsors and more support staff with an aim of being the best in the GCC region.

40SPORTSARAB TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 2016

2,500 players, 1,026 matches and more than $50,000 given in cash awards

Kuwait Domestic Cricket Season 2015-16 ends with a bang

Winners and runners up captains for a group photo after the awarding ceremony.

CRICKET

EASTBOURNE, England, June 21, (Agencies): Petra Kvitova insists her con-fidence is “pretty good” despite recent poor results as she advanced to the third round of the Eastbourne International on Tuesday.

Fifth-seeded Kvitova, who has reached just one semifinal this year, beat Timea Babos of Hungary 6-4, 7-6 (5).

“I’m kind of feeling that I am playing well, even though I lost some of the matches in a couple of months,” she said, including a second-round defeat in England at Birmingham last week.

The two-time Wimbledon champion broke in the first set to lead 5-4 against Babos but then had to fight off two break points as she closed out the set. In a tense second set, the Czech held four break points to lead 5-4 before Babos took her to a tiebreaker.

Caroline Wozniacki of Denmark also reached the third round by crushing sev-enth-seeded Samantha Stosur of Australia 6-2, 6-1, while former top-ranked junior Kristina Mladenovic of France upset fourth-seeded Swiss Timea Bacsinszky 6-1, 7-5.

I love grass,” said Mladenovic. “I don’t have any surface that I don’t like.”

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Wimbledon chiefs have revealed armed police will guard the All England Club when the grass-court Grand Slam gets underway on Monday.

With security fears high in the after-math of the attempted terrorist attack on the France against Germany football match in Paris in November, Wimbledon will be patrolled by officers with guns inside and outside the famous arena in south-west London.

Around 500,000 fans are set to flood into Wimbledon throughout the two-week event and All England Club bosses have also increased the numbers of their private security staff to protect the crowds, according to a Times report on Tuesday.

Armed officers were used at Wimbledon last year but on a lower scale on the 10th anniversary of the 7/7 terror attacks in London.

“There will be more security in place than before. A level of armed police will be in evidence,” a Wimbledon spokes-man told The Times on Tuesday.

“The level of security and policing is commensurate with the threat and multi-layered, and it has been heightened as you would expect with everything that has been going on.

“We work with the Metropolitan Police all year around and with other authorities to formulate the plans, and people queueing outside Wimbledon are included in the overall plan.”

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After a season plagued with injuries and a health scare Jelena Jankovic, per-

haps more than any-one, needed the tonic of a few days soak-ing up the Mallorcan sunshine last week.

Despite the shim-mering allure of the Mediterranean from her hotel balcony, it was no holiday for the Serbian former world number one who is closing in on 1,000 WTA Tour

matches since turning professional 16 years ago.

At 31, she remains as motivated as ever and has taken heart from some of her fellow ‘veterans’ who joined the grand slam singles winners’ club past their 30th birthday.

That is despite going nearly three months this season without winning a match as she struggled with shoulder and back injuries so painful that she even found it difficult to wash her hair.

While that was frustrating, when a rou-tine MRI scan in April showed a cyst on her thyroid gland she was forced to deal with the possibility she may have cancer.

“It was a scary thought”, Jankovic said.“They did a biopsy and they removed

the cyst with a needle and luckily, it was benign.”

With that behind her and her injuries healing, she is hoping the second half of the year is kinder.

Armed police to guard Wimbledon as security stepped up

Confident Kvitova advances at Eastbourne

TENNIS

Kvitova

Top and above: Photos taken from the event

Courtyard Kuwait celebrates the opening ceremony of Euro Cup ’16

KUWAIT CITY, June 21: Courtyard by Marriott Hotel Kuwait organized an event to cele-brate the opening ceremony of the Euro Cup 2016 on June 10.

The event was organized in coopera-tion with the French Embassy in Kuwait, and was held at the “Atrium” Restaurant. Attendees included the French Ambassador to Kuwait, His Excellency Christian Nakhlé, guests from the Embassy and media representatives.

The “Atrium” restaurant is consid-ered the perfect venue for football fans in Kuwait who want to watch the Euro Cup matches with friends and family, while enjoying unparalleled hospitality and great atmosphere.

“We are very proud to be part of this initiative, which shows our con-tinuous commitment to stay relevant to the world’s events,” said George Aoun, Cluster General Manager at Marriott Hotels in Kuwait.

It is also worth mentioning that the Courtyard by Marriott Kuwait has recently launched a new culinary adventure called “The Market”. The new culinary concept allows guests to enjoy a dining extravaganza from around the globe.

“The Market “offers a wide array of stations with ready-to-eat food from the most popular cuisines in the World, including Indian, Asian, Mediterranean and a lot more. Throughout the month of Ramadan, “The Market” offers a generous Arabian feasts featuring delicious Ramadan dishes, live cooking sta-tions, live entertainment and a wide range of shisha flavors.

In addition, the stunning oriental decoration and tent-like surroundings as well as the weekly raffle draw to win valuable prizes, makes “The Market” the perfect Ramadan venue to enjoy unforgettable time with friends and family.

Top and above: Guests pose for a photo during the event

Reddy best bowler of Division E

Chairman Emad Al Jassam with a memento of appreciation

Runners up Al Bader Shipping