An all-native Polish club Warsaw Hussars organized the 2nd Native 6-s tournament on 30-31st of July 2016. This year five teams from three nations (Poland North, Poland South, Estonia 1, Estonia 2 and Serbia) participated.
The SCF viewed this tournament as an opportunity to provide international experience to young players and women cricketers so apart from three well-known faces (Vladimir Ninković – national team captain, Haris Dajč – SCF chairman, Dragan Đokić – national team wk and the main youth coach), three other players were Boško Didanović (the most improved player in 2015), Tijana Anić (the best female cricketer in 2015) and Jovan Reb (U15 captain).
The other teams were also balanced with higher number of experienced players playing for Poland North and Estonia I, than with their “second” teams. According to the tournament rules the batsman were supposed to retire after 25 runs, the wides and no-balls were penalized by 3 runs, with the maximum of 6 balls per over in the first 9 overs of the match.
The first match of the day 1 was Estonia 1 – Poland South, comfortably won by the last year’s winners – Estonia. The 2nd match of the day was between Serbia and Poland North. We basically had no idea about the strength of Polish team, and the quality of two opening bowlers (A.Krasinski and J.Blasczykowsky) surprised the Serbian batters who eventually accumulated 80 runs (Ninković 25*, Đokić 15). The bowling was not up to the standard so the Polish team secured the win in the 9th over (Grzedowski, Siochaj and A.Kasinski). When Estonia I easily beat Estonia II it was obvious that the champion will be decided among Serbia, Poland North and Estonia I.
Our second match was played against Poland South who batted first and finished the innings with 64 runs. That score was not difficult to overcome by Didanović, Reb and Anić, thus securing the first win for Serbia.
The last, and the most important for us, match of the day was against Estonia I. Despite the fact that in the first over Đokić took an important wicket (Raud), Vislapuu and Vaik scored 25* to give Estonia a solid lead of 98 runs. However, Đokić’s and Ninković’s 25* were not sufficient to reach the Estonia’s score, and Serbia lost by 10 runs.
The fourth match Serbia played against Estonia 2, with Didanović and Reb successfully chasing the score of 67.
That Polish bowling prowess will determine the winner of the tournament was noticeable after the match against Estonia 1, in which they restricted the powerful Estonian hitters to 76 runs. The same story was repeated in the Final, which Poland North won by 5 wickets (Grzedowski, A.Krasinski).
The MVP of the tournament was a 17 year old Adam Krasinski, who excelled both with the bat and the bowl.
Finally, the chairman of Warsaw Hussars, Jerzy Suchodolski was announced that in 2017 the event may grow into 11-a-side tournament and involve more countries.
