An ambitious program is on the cards for Saturday December 3rd as Bochum Cricket Club in the industrial heartland of Germany host their 2nd invitational indoor tournament. Teams from as far as Frankfurt and G�ttingen (near the old East-West border) will be competing for the title of champion.

An ambitious schedule sees the eight teams playing in two groups and playing some 19 matches in total in 1 day in 1 gym!

Group A: Bochum CC 1, Bonn CC, Oldenburg CC, G�ttingen CC.

Group B: Rodgau CC, Bochum CC 2, Frankfurt CC, Dortmund CC.

Even more interesting is the Quarterfinal format,. A quote directly from the playing conditions;

"The Hercules Quarterfinal.
After organising indoor tournaments in the past and playing in some of the recent ones, we felt the necessity of slightly modifying the tournament format. The reasons are as follows:

1) Avoiding pointless, irrelevant games in the preliminary round in which the teams know in advance, they won�t be able to reach the next round and therefore don�t show fighting spirit. For instance a group match being played between the teams positioned on three and four.

2) Avoiding teams leaving the tournament early without playing their full quota of matches, knowing they won�t reach the next round.

In order to alleviate such circumstances we will introduce a so called Hercules-Quarterfinal. After the completion of the preliminary matches the teams from one group play in reverse order with teams from the other group. Yet these Quarterfinals will be different from the conventional ones because the teams finally positioned three and four in their groups would have only four overs to bat instead of five. The teams positioned one and two would hereby enjoy the advantage of batting all their five overs.

Surely we could have applied the same format as used in the recent tournaments by playing directly the semifinals, but the new format allows a good minimum number of matches for all participants and a chance for every team to come forward. On the other hand we are also not playing the conventional Quarterfinals, so the teams don�t take their entrance in the next round as granted. Therefore the teams positioned at three and four have to bring up a brave Hercules type display in order to reach the semifinals. Long Live Hercules!"

So will there be a Herculean effort from 1 of the 8 teams this weekend? Spectators can certainly hope so, as although there are no outright favourites, Dortmund CC - new to the NRW league in 2005 - made the established teams stop and think in their first season of competitive league cricket. G�ttingen CC may have youth on their side as the team based in the university try to overcome the aging Bonn CC squad, who surprisingly nearly walked away as champions of Nord Rhein Westfalen in 2005.

The 2 teams from Hessen drawn in Group B, Frankfurt and Rodgau, both with German National players in their squads, will be challenging the hosts Bochum, who can always manage a surprise, and it promises to be an exciting and entertaining day of cricket at the Erich-K�stner Gesamtschule, Halle 2 in Bochum.

Results and a report will appear on this site in due course.