On October 23rd, the UCSD cricket team had two games against UCLA and USC. Unfortunately, the team's batting did not really fire and they slumped to 92 all out against UCLA in the first game, with the top scorer from our innings being Shravan with 22. However, the boys came out with a lot of heart in the field and put up a valiant display of bowling to take the game till the 19th over, with all of the bowlers going at an economy of under 5.5 to run UCLA very close. In the second game against USC, Sarthak hit a blistering 116* off 63 balls to take UCSD to an imposing total of 163/4 on a slow outfield. This was UCSD's first T20 hundred, and the fact that it came on the stage of the biggest tournament of the year was amazing. Coming off confidence from the bowling innings in the UCLA game, they started well in the field against USC as well. Nikhil Hegde took 3 wickets in the powerplay to put USC on the back foot early, but USC's middle order and lower order put up a fight after the powerplay to take it to a 50-50 last over situation. USC needed 12 runs to win off the last over. Unfortunately, USC's set batsmen were able to get the necessary 12 runs, and ended up winning on the last ball of the game to cap off an intense victory for them.

During our second and last week of the tournament (10/31), the UCSD cricket team played against UC Berkeley. There were a couple of debuts given this weekend as well, with an emphasis on checking out our fast bowling depth. Batting first, UCSD got to 106/9 in 20 overs off the backs of contributions across the board, with a lot of batsmen getting starts but failing to convert. In reply, Berkeley blazed to 107/0 in 7.1 overs with a powerplay in which they belted UCSD bowlers all over the park. The team was completely outplayed in the 2nd innings of the game, but many of the young bowlers took a lot of learning from this experience.