A little backstory on EPL, the last one was conducted in 2019 before the pandemic changed our entire work culture. The excitement of the yearly cricket tournament organized by Evon Technologies, Dehradun turned into a three-year-long wait. So naturally, the fifth edition of the Evon Premier League (EPL), an inter-office cricket tournament brought in a lot of anticipation and enthusiasm. The upside was that a lot of new participants volunteered this year while the former ones got back with the same shape and energy. 

Kicked off on November 12th, 2022 at OFD Stadium in Raipur,  the tournament went on for a month, thanks to Shubham Mamgain, Sachin Joshi, Nitish Rawat, and Rakesh Pant who administered it all along. A total of five teams went head-to-head with one another with the winning team taking the trophy home: 

• Winner: LS Dragons (Abhishek Raturi)
  Finalist: Mobile (Devesh Bhandari)
  2nd semifinalist: PHP Royal Challengers (Shashank Garg)
  Tech Warriors (Mayank Thapliyal)
  Evon jaguars (Akash Batra)

In the initial phase of the tournament i.e. league matches, all five teams played one match with each team to prevent elimination by winning and scoring as many points as possible.  As a result, every team played four games each in the league stage. Mobile and LS Dragons did exceptionally well to secure 1st and 2nd position by winning three matches each. Mobile stayed on the top owing to their tie match with Tech Warriors while LS dragons lost one to Mobile, hence the 2nd place. Followed by PHP R Challengers and Tech Warriors in the 3rd and 4th place. Unfortunately, Evon Jaguars was the one who couldn’t secure a win and qualify for the Playoffs.  

The top four teams advanced to playoffs which were played over three rounds - Semifinal 1, Eliminator, and Semifinal 2. 

• The semifinal 1 played between first and second-placed teams was particularly a thrilling one. After losing to Mobile by a huge margin of runs in their first encounter, LS dragons were out for vengeance.  They were successful in doing so and won the match effortlessly to qualify directly for the final.  But it was far from over for Mobile as they still had the chance to redeem themselves and hit back by playing in semifinal 2.
• In the eliminator, the third and fourth-placed teams were pitted against each other. The loser (Tech Warriors) was eliminated and the winner (PHP R challengers) secured their spot to go against Mobile in Semifinal 2.
• Semifinal 2 was held between the winner of Game 2 played and the loser of Game 1. While the underdog PHP R challengers were playing to make their way into finals, Mobile had a sight to go against LS dragons one more time to get things even. A well-deserved win against the opponent sent Mobile to the final to play against LS Dragon for the third time. 

EPL 2022 Final

The Finals couldn’t have been better, the tournament rivals went against each other on December 11, 2022, which was witnessed by a large number of employees on the ground. Upon winning the toss, the Mobile team decided to bat first and were able to put a decent total of 155 runs on the scoreboard in 20 overs at the loss of 7 wickets. In the early overs, Mobile was able to put pressure on LS Dragons but after some unexpected wickets, the run rate went under 5 runs per over. 

It was time for LS Dragons to chase down the target set by the opposite team. They had a shaky opening, lost crucial wickets, and the pressure of the run chase began seemed to affect them. But thanks to their 2 middle-order batsmen, who kept them in a pressure situation and scored 90+ runs on their own. It was a piece of cake after that,  team LS Dragons chased it without breaking a sweat and lifted this year's EPL trophy becoming EPL 2022 Champions. The nail-biter came to end with rejoicing and celebration as LS Dragon took the match from Mobile's grasp and won after five seasons of EPL. 

Every player demonstrated a great deal of sportsmanship as the day concluded with an award ceremony where the winning team (LS Dragons) was presented with a trophy, and individual awards were given to the players for their remarkable performance. Best Batsman was given to Sandeep Rawat (Mobile) for scoring 287 Runs in the tournament.

Best Bowler was tied between 3 players Sachin Joshi (PHP R. Challengers), Sandeep Rawat (Mobile) & Devesh (Mobile) with 11 wickets in the tournament. The player of the Tournament was Sandeep Rawat (Mobile) with 472 Player Points.

The EPL helps employees showcase their capability outside the workplace, an opportunity to interact with their colleagues and form understanding at a different level. A sincere thanks to Sumeet Arora CTO for making it all possible and encouraging players in the final match, it was a sheer pleasure to have him on the grounds. We had some exhilarating matches throughout the tournament, it was such a rush and we can’t wait for the next edition of EPL at Evon, a software development company in India.