Aspiring teams gear up for ICC U19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier

Tournament to be held from 15 to 22 October in Malaysia

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has announced the squads and schedule for the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier which will take place from 15 to 22 October in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The five teams competing in the event are regional runners-up Ireland (Europe), Nepal (Asia), Papua New Guinea (East-Asia Pacific), Uganda (Africa) and USA (Americas) and they will be bidding to win the tournament and book the final remaining place in the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup which takes place from 22 January to 14 February 2016.

Uganda Head Coach Henry Okecho believes that it is important to start well as the side bids to qualify for its third U19 Cricket World Cup, having previously qualified for the 2004 (Bangladesh) and 2006 (Sri Lanka) tournaments.

Jagat Tamata Coach of Nepal, whose side faces Papua New Guinea in the opening round in Kinrara Oval on Friday, said: “We feel now the Nepalese team is mentally strong as well as physically fit and over the last two months our team has been very hard working in preparation.

Dipak Patel, the former New Zealand international and current Head Coach of Papua New Guinea hopes that his side can book its passage to India. “The PNG Garramuts are looking forward to the challenge in Kuala Lumpur. They have worked very hard in PNG with very limited resources and game-time.

One of the many players keen to make a positive mark and help his nation qualify for the ICC U19 Cricket World Cup is Ireland captain Jack Tector who is hopeful of a successful tournament in what he admits will be challenging conditions. “As a group we are massively excited for the tournament. It gives us the opportunity to improve even further on the good things we did in Jersey.

Tournament Schedule:

15 October – Nepal v Papua New Guinea (Kinrara Oval), Uganda v USA (Royal Selengor Club)
16 October – Papua New Guinea v Ireland (Kinrara Oval), Nepal v Uganda (Royal Selengor Club)
17 October – Reserve/Rest Day
18 October – Papua New Guinea v Uganda (Kinrara Oval), USA v Ireland (Royal Selengor Club)
19 October – Nepal v USA (Kinrara Oval), Uganda v Ireland (Royal Selengor Club)
20 October – Reserve/Rest Day
21 October – Nepal v Ireland (Kinrara Oval), Papua New Guinea v USA (Royal Selengor Club)
22 October – Final (Kinrara Oval), 3rd & 4th Place Play-Off (Royal Selengor Club)

Match Officials: Graeme La Brooy (Match Referee), Tabarak Dar, Vinay Kumar Jha, Sarika Prasad (Mentor Umpire), Ahmad Shah Pakteen, Ian Thomson, Kalidas Viswanadan

Squads

IRELAND: Jack Tector (captain), Rory Anders, Andrew Austin, Varun Chopra, Sonny Cott, Adam Dennison, Aaron Gillespie, Joshua Little, Gary McClintock, William McClintock, James Mitchell, Tom Stanton, Lorcan Tucker, Benjamin White

NEPAL: Raju Rijal (captain), Kushal Bhurtel, Sunil Dhamala, Sushil Kandel, Yogendra Singh Karki, Saurabh Khanal, Lalit Narayan Rajbanshi, Shankar Rana, MD Arif Sheikh, Dipesh Shrestha, Rajbir Singh, Dipendra Singh Airee, Sandeep Sunar, Prem Tamang

PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Sinaka Harry Arua, Ovia Boge, Jack Dairi, Arua Gau, Doura Iruna Gavera, Harry Christopher Gavera, Lohia Guba, Vagi Guba, Vagi Miria John, Vagi Karoho, Vagi Boko Kora, Sere Sam, Lou Vagi Toua, Nou Mavara Ako Toua

UGANDA: Derrick Bakunzi (captain), Brian Adriko, Frank Akankwasa, Zephania Arinaitwe, Trevor Bukenya, Joseph Byaruhanga, John Gabula, Abdalah Lubega, Simon Okecho, Collines Okwalinga, Ashiraf Senkubuge, David Wabwire, Steven Wabwose, Kenneth Waiswa

USA: Alexander Shoff (captain), Mohak Buch, Srihari Dasarathy, Kushal Ganji, Tohidul Islam, Vivek Narayan, Gaurav Patanker, Arjun Patel, Sagar Patel, Sahil Patel, Keifer Phill, Anup Rao, Gauranshu Sharma, Anirudh Srinivas

Strong Turnout For FEI World Cup™ Jumping Qualifiers Across Four Continents

FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014/2015 – Leagues Update 2

Horse-and-rider combinations from the Americas, Africa, Asia and Europe have enjoyed some great competition during the FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014/2015 qualifiers, with a particularly strong turnout in South America.

The Caucasian, South African and Central Asian leagues are also complete, and invitations to attend the Longines FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014/2015 Final in Las Vegas, USA continue to be processed.

Longines FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014:2015

South America

The South America South League was an impressive affair, with six legs staged between May and October 2014 in which 79 athletes participated, and it was Brazil’s Sergio Henriques Neves Marins who came out on top.

The first and fifth rounds of competition were held in Argentina, at Sol de Mayo and Buenos Aires, while the remainder took place in Brazil, visiting Sao Paulo twice and Porto Alegre once before concluding at Rio de Janeiro.

The winning rider sealed victory with four starts, and although runner-up, fellow-Brazilian Artemus de Almeida, counted two wins along the way, Sergio Henriques Neves Marins racked up 56 points to top the final leaderboard by a convincing seven-point margin. Uruguay’s Marcelo Chirico Ferreira finished third while Brazilian riders filled the next six places.

Henriques Neves Marins, a veteran of the FEI World Equestrian Games™ in Jerez (ESP) in 2002 and the Athens Olympic Games in 2004, was in flying form throughout the 2014 season. The 45-year-old rider has found a consistently good performer in his 13-year-old horse Landpeter do Feroleto, and together they claimed team silver and individual bronze at last summer’s South American Games in Quillota (CHI) before coming out to clinch maximum points at the opening FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014/2015 qualifier. They didn’t win that day, finishing second behind Jose Roberto Reynoso Fernandez, but claimed 20 points as their Brazilian counterparts were not in the hunt for points.

Henriques Neves Marins then joined up with Reynoso Fernandez, Artemus del Almeida and Francisco Jose Mesquita Musa to win the Nations Cup at CSIO4*-W at Porto Alegre in October, and rounded up the year with another good result at the last FEI World Cup™ Jumping leg to clinch pole position in the league.

Riders from Colombia and Venezuela battled it out in the South America North League in which 12 riders competed in the four legs. The first two qualifiers took place in Caracas, Venezuela while rounds three and four were staged in Bogota, Colombia. Riders could count results from three legs, but Colombia’s Camilo Rueda won with just two scores to count, and Colombians filled all of the top five places on the final leaderboard.

Santiago Medina finished second ahead of Juan Manuel Gallego in third, Juan Clavijo in fourth and Ricardo Alerto Villa in fifth spot.

Rueda was impressively consistent with his 13-year-old grey Holsteiner stallion, Cassaro, and finished with a final tally of 25 points ahead of Medina’s 23.

South African and Caucasian Leagues

The South African league began last May and ran through to October, embracing five legs. Visiting Midrand, Shongweni, Polokwane, Kromdraai and Port Elizabeth it attracted 38 South African athletes and Nicole Horwood clinched the league title ahead of Barry Taylor in runner-up spot, Shaun Neill in third and Dominey Alexander in fourth place.

Norwood kicked off with a 12th-place finish at Midrand riding Capital Colnardo, but she really got into her stride with victory at Shongweni with Capital Don Cumarco, the 12-year-old grey Belgian stallion she partnered for the remainder of the series and who has a great record as a three-time winner of the coveted South African Derby.

At Polokwane they lined up third, and at Kromdaai and Port Elizabeth they finished sixth and seventh respectively, accumulating 46 points which left them a full five points clear of their nearest rivals in the final analysis.

The Caucasian series consisted of three legs, and victory went to Azerbaijan’s Kanan Novruzov. The first competition took place at Tbilisi in Georgia and the remaining two rounds were held in Baku, the capital city of Azerbaijan. There were 11 athletes in action, and 10 of them collected points.

Novruzov made the perfect start with a win at the opening leg in Tblisi riding the 11-year-old bay Holsteiner gelding Concorde 57. The 24-year-old rider followed that with a fourth-place finish in Baku a few weeks later, and those two results were good enough to leave him a single point clear of series runner-up Alexandra Olejnik.

Of the 11 participating riders throughout the series only two hailed from Georgia, and riders from Azerbaijan dominated the final leaderboard, with Elmar Abdulayet finishing third ahead of Seyid Musayev in fourth and Patrick McEntee in fifth.

Thailand’s Siengsaw Lertratanachai won the FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014/2015 South East Asia League (FEI/horsemovethailand.com)

Central and South East Asia

The Central Asian League was another three-leg affair in which 21 athletes from three countries – Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan – took part, and the winner was Kyrgyzstan’s Rinat Galimov.

The league opened in Tashkent, Uzbekistan with the second round taking place at Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan and the third at Astana in Kazakhstan, and Galimov got off at a great gallop with a win in Tashkent partnering her 13-year-old Swedish-bred mare, Charlize. The 30-year-old rider then repeated her success in Bishkek and was in an unassailable position by the time she arrived in Astana for the last leg, where she was just pipped for the honours by Kazakhstan’s Oleg Popelyaev who filled runner-up spot on the league leaderboard.

Uzbekistan’s Gairat Nazarov finished third in this series ahead of Kazakhstan’s Asset Tolkumbekov in fourth and Kamil Saitov in fifth place.

It was a close-fought battle for the South East Asian title which went to 18-year-old Siengsaw Lertratanachai by a narrow one-point margin over fellow-Thai rider Chewin Manathanya. All three legs took place in Pattaya, Thailand.

Lertratanachai was silver medallist at the FEI World Jumping Challenge Final 2013 in Caracas, Venezuela and finished fifth individually at the South East Asian Games at Naypyidaw, Malaysia in that same year. She was on the Thai team at the Asian Games 2014 in Incheon, Korea and, like so many other champions this season, her success in the FEI World Cup™ Jumping 2014/2015 South East Asian League began with a win at the opening leg. Partnering the 13-year-old AES mare, Viranka B, she then went on to finish third and fourth at the two remaining competitions, but she was stalked all the way by Manthanya who finished third at the first leg but then came out to win next time with Blue Boy. It was nip-and-tuck at the final leg which was won by French rider Mathilde Montginoux ahead of Sweden’s Helena Gabrielson.

In the end, Letratanachai’s faster eight-fault result gave her fourth place ahead of 31-year-old Manthanya in fifth, and that result would count as riders used their best two scores to decide the final standings.

Louise Parkes,

2015-2019 U12 Hosting Rights Awarded To Tainan; U18 And U12 Baseball World Cups Nations, Dates Announced

World governing body WBSC announced today a landmark agreement that awards Tainan City, Chinese Taipei the hosting rights of the next three editions (2015, 2017, 2019) of the WBSC Under-12 Baseball World Cup, which is the only international baseball tournament in this age group (11-12 years old) to feature National Teams (along with the U12 World Cup continental qualifiers), and is the only world championship tournament in all of sports at this age level.

Cuba at the Inaugural 2011 U12 Baseball World Cup. WBSC

WBSC also revealed the qualified nations and dates for the 2015 U18 and U12 Baseball World Cups — the highest and most elite competition platforms for baseball players in these age groups.

WBSC leadership hailed the latest breakthrough agreement on the U12 World Cup, which follows last week’s major announcements on WBSC’s new flagship professional world championship — Premier 12™ — as key indicators that baseball and softball’s National Team international competitions, which are exclusive to WBSC and its Members, continue to gain a foothold among athletes, hosts, fans, broadcasters and sponsors in the sporting world’s highly competitive marketplace.

While traditionally awarding each edition of the Baseball World Cup to new host countries, WBSC leaders cited the sustainability, reduced costs and streamlined operational planning in awarding Tainan the next three editions of the U12 World Cup, which will also maximise returns and the legacy for the host city, WBSC leaders said.

The new approach, specific to the WBSC U12 World Cup, which WBSC leaders regard as having “tremendous potential to mature into one of the baseball’s biggest international showcases”, will present new opportunities to enhance and tailor long-term partnerships and sponsorship strategies for all concerned stakeholders, WBSC officials highlighted.

2015 WBSC U18 Baseball World Cup XXVII — Japan

It was also announced that the 2015 WBSC U18 World Cup will be staged from 28 August – 06 September, with the “Mecca of Japanese Baseball” — historic Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya built in 1924 — serving as an iconic backdrop for the world’s best 18-year-old baseball players and future superstars.

KOR vs USA at the 2013 U12 Baseball World Cup.WBSC

Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) is adjusting the Hanshin Tigers’ home schedule at the legendary 47,000-seat (Hanshin) Koshien Stadium to accommodate and further add to the prestige of the WBSC U18 Baseball World Cup — and to honour the best young baseball players in the world and help drive a magical in-stadium fan-experience.

The nations heading to Koshien Stadium have been finalised after the first-ever U18 World Cup continental qualifiers in Africa (Mera, Kenya) and Oceania (Auckland, New Zealand) concluded this past weekend. The historic qualifiers were regarded by WBSC leadership as “key breakthroughs in baseball/softball’s global evolution that unite the U18 Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and Oceania continental championships”.

The U18 World Cup in Japan will feature seven out of the Top 10 nations in the world, and eleven out of the Top 20, making for one of the most competitive U18 World Cups on record.

The powerful bloc of U18 World Cup qualified nations represents a global footprint that spans across the entire western hemisphere, Africa, Asia, Central and Southern Europe, and Oceania:

Americas (North-, Central- and South America, and the Caribbean): Two-time defending U18 World Champions No. 2 USA, No. 3 Cuba, No. 7 Canada, No. 12 Mexico and No. 16 Brazil.
Africa: No. 29 South Africa
Asia: No. 1 Japan, No. 4 Chinese Taipei, No. 8 South Korea
Europe: No. 11 Italy and No. 20 Czech Republic
Oceania: No. 14 Australia

2015 WBSC U18 Baseball World Cup

WBSC officials are confident the 2015 U18 World Cup’s broadcast and online/mobile reach will surpass the record broadcast numbers of its 2013 U18 World Cup predecessor — which had a potential broadcast reach of 144 million homes and potential online/mobile reach of 20 million, based on reports furnished by leading media rights agency and WBSC broadcast partner MP & Silva. WBSC leaders base forecasts on the strength of the 2015 U18 World Cup nations, as well as the current positive audience growth trends for international baseball properties that feature WBSC’s Members’ National Teams.

U18 Global launching pad for future stars

The biennial U18 world championship showcase has featured some of the biggest names in the sport, such as Canada’s Brett Lawrie, Japan’s Yu Darvish and Shohei Ohtani, South Korea’s Shin-soo Choo, Cuba’s Yasiel Puig and Aroldis Chapman, and USA’s Justin Upton and Buster Posey, among countless others. The most recent generation of rising stars include Cuba’s Jorge Soler, USA’s Francisco Lindor and Canada’s Dalton Pompey, all of whom played at the 2010 U18 Baseball World Cup in Thunder Bay, Canada (which will return as host for the 2017 WBSC U18 Baseball World Cup).

World Baseball Softball Confederation

2015 WBSC U12 Baseball World Cup III — Nations and Dates

The third edition of the U12 Baseball World Cup, which will showcase the best 12-year-old baseball players in the world, will take place from 24 July to 2 August in Tainan City, with the United States, “Team USA”, entering as the defending U12 World Champions.

The twelve nations qualified for 2015 U12 Baseball World Cup represent a global expansion that includes a first-ever representative from Oceania:

Americas: No. 2 USA, No. 3 Cuba, No. 10 Venezuela, No. 12 Mexico, No. 13 Panama and No. 16 Nicaragua
Asia: No. 1 Japan, No. 4 Chinese Taipei, No. 8 South Korea
Europe: No. 27 France and No. 32 Russia
Oceania: No. 14 Australia

Added excitement will surround this year’s U18 and U12 World Cups, which kick-off the 4-year world rankings cycle — as points earned from these events will be the first to go toward the world rankings that will eventually determine the qualified nations for the 2019 Premier 12™ Pro Baseball World Championship.

Logos, groupings and tournament schedules for the U18 and U12 Baseball World Cups will be unveiled in future announcements.