Hosts Sporting Alfas take on Intellectuals CC in Match No.1 and 2 of the European Cricket Series (ECS) Spain Alfas del Pi 2021 at the Sporting Alfas Cricket Club in Alicante, Spain at 12:30 PM and 2:30 PM (IST).

Three teams, namely Sporting Alfas, Intellectuals CC and Madrid United will take part in the competition, where they play each other four times across twelve matches. 

Sporting Alfas finished fourth in ECS Alicante 2020. They dominated in all the games and looked a strong side in the very first ECS tournament last year. However, they failed to go further as they were handed a shock defeat in the semi-finals. Jack Perman is the leading run-scorer for Sporting Alfas with 537 runs at a strike-rate of 170. Christian Munoz also made 127 runs at a strike-rate of 125. Waqar Ashraf was their best bowler and had picked up 16 wickets while bowling at an economy rate of 8.97. Perman also took 11 wickets apart from his exploits with the bat. 

On the other hand, Intellectuals CC had an outing to forget in the ECS Alicante 2020. They lost all of their six games and struggled at the bottom of the table for the entire tournament. The pressure will be on them coming into this tournament to try and put up a better show this time around. Muhammad Nadeem scored 167 runs in the ECS Alicante 2020. 

Hosts Sporting Alfas certainly start as favourites and will fancy their chances to win both the first two matches and start well in the tournament. It will be interesting to see if the Intellectuals CC can cause an upset first up. 

My Dream11 Dream Team for SPA vs INT Match: 

Javed Iqbal, Phil Pennick, Umair Akram, Jack Perman, Christian Munoz-Mills, Muhammad Nadeem, Imran Muhammad (C), Waqar Ashraf (VC), Darren Walker, Ibtisam Ahmad, Jamshaid Ahmad. 

Probable Playing XI

Sporting Alfas

Ian Byrne, Phil Pennick, Tyler Hogan, Christian Munoz-Mills, Jack Perman, Waqar Ashraf, Imran Muhammad, Antonio Brown, Jamshaid Ahmad, Darren Walker, Jake Sunderland. 

Probable Playing XI

Intellectuals CC

Javed Iqbal, Zia Ul- Qayam, Shakeel Sultan Hafiz, Umair Akram, Husnain Akram, Furqan Zameer, Rahat Abbas, Muhammad Nadeem, Ibtisam Ahmad, Hassan Askari, Faisal Rehman. 

Squad

Sporting Alfas

Ian Byrne, Phil Pennick, Tyler Hogan, Christian Munoz-Mills, Jack Perman, Waqar Ashraf, Imran Muhammad, Antonio Brown, Jamshaid Ahmad, Darren Walker, Jake Sunderland, Paul Quinlan, B Marriner, Rhys Flower, S Anderson, Jamie Roper. 

Intellectualls CC

Javed Iqbal, Zia Ul- Qayam, Shakeel Sultan Hafiz, Umair Akram, Husnain Akram, Furqan Zameer, Rahat Abbas, Muhammad Nadeem, Ibtisam Ahmad, Hassan Askari, Faisal Rehman, Abdul Manan, Zia ul Qayum, Muhammad Kaleem.