Bay Area Telugu Association (BATA) conducted the 5th Annual BATA Cup Cricket tournament on Aug 9th and 10th, 2008 in Milpitas, California. Deccan Pacific Medical Group (DPMG) and Western Union (WU) have sponsored this event. This is the fifth straight year that DPMG sponsored this event. DPMG is a multi-specialty medical group delivering quality care for over 25 years in California. Western Union offers a convenient way of Money Transfer online with pay out at over 170000 Western Union Agent locations worldwide. The Cricket kit presented to the winning team was sponsored by Ramesh Mandalapu (Namaste Plaza). Vivek Choudary (SportsNation) sponsored the cricket balls for the tournament.

     BATA donated the proceeds from this event to Sankara Eye Foundation (SEF). As in the past, there was a huge response to the tournament this year as well. However, due to logistics, the tournament was limited to total 30 teams. Majority of participating teams were from CricBay and TCA. The format of the tournament was 6-overs-6-aside. The tournament started at 8AM and went all the way through 7PM on both the days. Players came well prepared to the tournament resulting in nail-biting matches anxxxxxxxxxxxxxd major upsets. The enthusiastic spectators (consisting of spouses, children, family & friends) provided a lot of support by cheering their favorite teams. The players responded equally by treating the crowd to a flurry of 4’s and 6’s as well as some excellent bowling & fielding. The women tournament was the highlight of the event. The games were so close that a winner couldn’t be decided until the last ball of the tournament. Overall, the tournament was conducted in a very professional and organized manner and was a great success yet again.

      The following are the results from the tournament:

      Women teams:

     Vijay Chava, Rajender Rao, Ramesh Gubba, Buchanna Gajula, Ramesh goud,Prahalad, Sridhar, Sanjay ,Venkat katakam and Biksham Palabindela were prominet people attend the meeting among others.