AZB & Partners picked up the Westlaw-SILF cup 2012 after defeating a heterogeneous lawyers’ team named Lawyers United by seven wickets in the finals of the annual law firm cricket tournament held at Hamdard University, Delhi on Sunday evening.

SILF chairman Lalit Bhasin said: “This is a tournament where actually no one loses. The idea is not to have a competition in sports but to have camaraderie. Sports is being used as a medium to achieve that.”

“We are not professional sportsmen, we are professional lawyers. Instead of having a spirit of competition which is alright for the courts, the idea is to promote mutual bonding.

“That’s what we have achieved.”

Bhasin told Legally India that this year’s tournament has been particularly successful in terms of the exceptional spirit of sportsmanship and mutual appreciation shown by all participating law firms which were applauding even others part of the competition.

He mentioned that there were no complaints of outsiders being part of any law firm teams, as they had put in place a mechanism to check the participation of ringers reported last year. All law firms were asked to intimate the list of all team members, their enrolment dates as well as the date of joining the firm, well in advance. Even the number of non-lawyer staff persons allowed to play on each team was restricted to two.

AZB & Partners associate Ashwat Kumar was declared man of the match as well as man of the tournament while associate Dushyant Bagga bagged the best bowler title. Trilegal associate Ashish Bhan was best batsman and Dhiraj Gupta from Lawyers United won the best fielder title.

The Lawyers United team was formed at the last moment when the team from Kant Associates backed out of the tournament. Percy Billimoria from AZB & Partners along with Sachin Puri from United Chambers of Law (UCL) came together to lead a team formed by mostly UCL employees in competing against AZB for the cup.

The other two matches being held at the venue on the same day were the Westlaw-SILF plate finals and the bowl finals.

Amarchand & Mangaldas defeated Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan by six wickets to lift the plate. Prashant Mehta from Amarchand & Mangaldas was declared man of the match and of the tournament while Varun Bajaj from Amarchand, and Krishna Menon and Rachit Jain from Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan picked up the titles for best bowler, best batsman and best fielder respectively.

At the Bowl finals, Singh Associates defeated Lall & Sethi by 180 runs, with Amandeep Singh from Singh Associates bagging man of the match and best batsman titles. Naval Kastia from Lal & Sethi was the man of the tournament while the best bowler and best fielder titles were picked up by Bhupendar and Vipin Kumar, respectively, from Singh Associates.

Bhasin, alongwith 20 participating law firms, now look forward to the Six-a-Side tournament that will be played on th 17^th and 18^th of this month. This tournament shall comprise several short matches of around 20 minutes each, which, Bhasin said, has the advantage of securing the physical presence of all participants throughout the duration of the tournament. “Otherwise what happens is that only the supporters of the team playing at the moment remain present”, quipped Bhasin stating that this tournament will be a finale of sorts. “It will be a relaxing sideshow”, he promised.