LONDON: Griffins Cricket Club from Croydon has won the UK Malayalee Cricket League 2010 with some very convincing wins against most of the teams in the UK. Griffins has taken away the League title from formidable East Ham Malayalee Cricket Club (EMCC) who have been the League winners for the last four years.

Griffins become the second team to bring the League cup to Croydon. The first time the cup came to Croydon was in 2004 by Croydon Kerala Cricket Club (CKCC).EMCC ended runners up and Global came in third place in the League this year.

Griffins Cricket Club was established in 2008. The idea of the club was born in the mind of Rajeev Kesavan an ex Croydon Kerala Cricket Club (CKCC) player, and in turn Terbin Sasi created Griffins. The duo was later joined by Biju, which made up the management of Griffins.

These three members joined forces together to find players from all over the UK by doing online advertisement and flyers at universities seeking for Malayalee cricket players. The response was tremendous and they set up a team to play for UKMCL Twenty20 in 2008.

The Twenty20 opened a new door to team Griffins that enabled them to prepare for 2009 which meant widening their search for more Malayalee players. Due to the high response, Griffins had to set up two teams for the Twenty20 in 2009.

The team is made up of International and National students. Some team members came to the UK to work whereas some members have always worked in the UK. This factor has a huge positive impact on the team in terms of support, commitment, encouragement and dedication.

Some of their players have played for India Indoors, Kerala State, Districts and Surrey.

Griffins are passionate supporters of UKMCL as they see it as a platform to make friends and network. As they rightly put it "We Love the League. Without It we do not exist".

They are all praise for the UKMCL management and very happy with how the whole tournament is organised.The most exciting aspect of the League for Griffins is them beating EMCC, the previous years champions.

Some of the other cricketers they like most are Babu, Vitty, Manoj and Shanker from Phoenix, Sujith and Sijo from EMCC, Sharon from Global and Dileep from KCC.

On a question on Which was the most difficult team for them to beat and why, they responded like this.

"Every team had their own quality that makes each of them difficult to be beaten. However, if we have to pick a team we would say Pheonix, without a doubt! A full side can be threatening from the top until the very bottom. Pheonix has always been a challenge for us in every aspect of the game.

Akilan Thamarakulam of Griffins became the highest scorer in the League by scoring 400 plus runs.