Youth Cricket Tournament 2024
The normalcy of all the activities after the deadly waves of covid’19 was sealed in style and energy by the youth of Defence colony with the organization of a full day and night cricket tournament on 31st March’24.
The youth Icon and prodigy of Def col Vijay Kumar Pandey is now grown up to lead the Youth (and young at heart like us) for the bright future of our colony. Vijay Pandey and his hyperactive team (Seema Kandhari, Mandeep Singh, Ajit Yadav, Rahul and Rohit Malik, Deshpreet Singh) planned this grand tennis ball tournament about a month back to set tone for the colony to match up with the IPL season. The first draft was on the black board followed by professional touch up on the laptops by this digitally sound team. The Marketing of the tournament was given to Ajay Kumar due to his 35 years of rich marketing experience. The youth team met the JCO club President Vijay Bhardwaj who was quite supportive provided the infrastructure for the tournament. The chairperson of the SCF Harjit Kaur Bawa also pitched in with all the blessings and support for the success of this tournament for the colony. The core committee of the tournament led by Vijay Pandey registered 12 teams for the round robin phase to fight for the biggest prize of Rs. 11, 000, trophy and medals. The tournament started at 6 AM in the morning on Sun 31 Mar with some motivational music in a well decorated with banners and sponsor’s boards. It was really amazing to see so many big sponsors (Bikanerwals, Nizam’s, Everon ventures, Kanakshri, Defence –the beauty clinic, Evergreen, Malik Tent House) participated in the tournament to provide the cash prizes, snacks etc. after the initial rounds of very close matches the final two teams were chosen for the final by 5 PM. It was nice to see 3 Def col teams participate in the tournament and 2 of them reached semifinal but lost with a very thin margin…. Well played Guys!!
The Final was played between Andrews Ganj and Jal-Vihar teams. The ground was converted in a stadium with hundreds of Def col residents assembled for the whole day and the final was jam packed to boost the morale of the youngsters.
The juicy and spicy commentators entertained the crowd with witty jokes in between to keep the players motivated. The matches were attended by number of distinguished guests (Abhishek Dutt, Veena Khanna, Bansuri Swaraj, Kusum Lata Ramesh, SDM Gaurav Saini, ACP Vijay Pal Singh Tomar, JP Agarwal< Anil Chaudhary, Col Lamba, DN Puri, Sushil Bagga, Harjit Singh, Ajay Kumar, Sumeet Chugh, Tharkend Jai, Mr Sehdev, Manjeet Singh Chugh, Anuj Bakshi, Subhash Malhotra and many more well-known personalities. These Signatories blessed and motivated the youth of Def col with their short messages on the mike.
The Final match was won very closely by the overall winner Andrews Team which was applauded by all the spectators. A big cricket trophy was presented to the winning team with the cash Prize of Rs. 11,000 and medals to the entire players. The runner up team of Jal-vihar also received Rs. 5100 cash prize and medals. All the participants thanked Vijay Pandey and his team for successfully organizing the Def col cricket tournament and request to make it a regular affair. Vijay Pandey promised to organize the next tournament in the summer holidays during the evening.
