Jamia to Play in the Highly Anticipated Toyota University Cricket Championship

To encourage cricket at the university level, NDTV and the Ministry of HRD have joined hands to  launch the Toyota University Cricket Championship (TUCC) starting 23rd February 2013.

According to TUCC website, the tournament has been designed in a Twenty20 format, TUCC will reach more than 200 Universities and 20 lakh students across India. This initiative is backed by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to nurture and promote budding cricketers, and also has the support of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan.

An extension of the all-India inter-university Rohinton Baria Tournament, TUCC will feature the top 8 university cricket teams for the T20 league. The participating teams for the 2013 Championship that have been selected from the four regional zones are Jamia Milia Islamia, Aligarh Muslim University, Awadhesh Pratap Singh University, Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, Mumbai University, Jiwaji University, University of Madras and Jain University.

Before the tournament begins, each of the 8 teams will have their own “star” mentors such as Virender Sehwag and Rahul Dravid. Matches will be televised LIVE on NDTV. The Man of the Match and Man of the Series will receive cash awards in the tournament which starts on 23rd February 2013 and goes on till mid-March. Along with the on-field cricket action, fans can look forward to musical performances, great food, spectator competitions and more.

The All Star Northern Stars:

As mentioned earlier, eight teams have qualified from all over India to play in the TUCC tournament, out of which Jamia’s team is one. They call themselves the — Northern Stars.

The 18 lucky students to represent Jamia in the tournament are: Parveen Yadav (Capt.), Shivam Sharma, Amit Verma, Deepak Sharma, Mayank Vashisht, Mohd. Mukhtar, Rohit Sharma, Shivendra Pal, Waqar Khan, Aashish Chopra, Abhay Negi, Anuj Chaudhry, Atif Ahmad, Bharat Harit, Salman Khan, Sajid Jamali, Nitin Kumar, and Surinder Dahiya.

JMI’s Northern Stars team members (Image: Via ucc.in)

Match Schedule:

Jamia will play their and incidentally the tournament’s first match against University of Madras (Southern Sharks) on Saturday Feb. 23rd, at Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi. Their second match will be played against Mumbai University (Western Wolves) on Wednesday Feb. 27th in Bhopal Ground at Jamia Millia Islamia. And their third match will be against APS University, Rewa (Eastern Tigers) on Friday March 1st in Bhopal Ground at Jamia Millia Islamia.

JMI’s Match Schedule (Image: Via ucc.in)