About 800 spectators attended the country's first Junior National Cricket Tournament held June 22-25 at scattered South Bay venues, according to organizer Hemant Buch of Cupertino.

Buch said about 200 youngsters, ages 6 to 15, from as far away as New York and Kansas, played 22 matches on cricket pitches at Stanford University, and in Santa Clara, Cupertino and San Jose.

Teams from the Bay Area-based California Cricket Academy, which Buch founded in 2003, won first place in all three age categories -- 11 and younger, 12-13 and 14-15.

A total of 75 awards were handed out, and Buch said the events went smoothly, with no one filing grievances about how the matches were played.

Cricket is to fans in South Asia, New Zealand and other spots around the globe as baseball is to the United States. It was first played by the British in the 18th century and considered a gentlemanly sport. Buch said he hopes this was the first of many tournaments that hisacademy will host, and his goal is to work with cities and schools to establish a proper cricket pitch that would pass international inspection.

For more information on the California Cricket Academy, click on www.calcricket.org.Post tournament News Report from San Jose Mercury news (Read by over half a million people in the San Francisco bay area)