Rajesh Deo was eight years old in 1969, but clearly remembers sitting with his older brother and listening to live commentary on radio as Gundappa Viswanath made a century on Test debut against Bill Lawry’s Australia in Kanpur. That series got Deo hooked to the game, and he has been a loyalist since then. One of his dreams came true last Saturday (August 14) when he got a chance to interact first-hand with some eminent personalities of the game, and also visited the dressing-rooms at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai for the first time in his life.Deo sat on one of the chairs that used to be Sachin Tendulkar’s in the home dressing room, and stood on the player’s balcony visualising the 2011 World Cup final when Mahendra Singh Dhoni hit the winning six to give India the title after 28 years. He had lunch at the adjacent Cricket Club of India, visited the Esplanade Ground where the Parsees first started playing cricket in Mumbai in the 18th century, and the nets at the Shivaji Park Gymkhana where Ramakant Achrekar groomed Tendulkar to be a world-beater. Being an avid supporter of Mumbai cricket, he was also delighted to see the replica of the 41 Ranji Trophy titles showcased at the Mumbai Cricket Association office inside the premises of the Wankhede.He also heard cricketing lores from people like Madhav Apte, Nari Contractor, Milind Rege, Kenni Jayantilal, Amol Muzumdar, Ayaz Memon and Harsha Bhogle, among others.“It was one of the best days of my life. It was a thrilling experience,” Deo tells Wisden India over telephone, his excitement evident. “I mean, to be in that dressing room and just to know what players, especially Sachin, do gave me goose-bumps. It was surreal. It can’t get better for a cricket fanatic like me.”Deo was among a group of 36 people from different cities and six journalists who had booked themselves for India’s first-ever Cricket Heritage Tour (CHT), conceptualised by Theo Braganza, owner of Marine Sports – a very popular outlet for sports books in Mumbai — and Yajurvindra Singh, the former Test cricketer.The day started at 8am at Police Gymkhana before ending with dinner at the Middle Income Ground in Bandra. Apart from covering Wankhede, CCI and Shivaji Park, there were visits to Wilson College, Bandra School, Hindu Gymkhana, Islam Gymkhana, Parsee Gymkhana, Bombay Gymkhana, Oval Maidan, Cross Maidan, Azad Maidan, Port Vijay, Press Club and Sportsfield among other destinations – all significant landmarks in Mumbai and Indian cricket.The organisers had to skip going to MCA’s state-of-the-art indoor facilities at the Bandra Kurla Complex because of time constraints. At different venues, there were different speakers to entertain the guests. Like Contractor and Apte at CCI before lunch, and Memon and Bhogle over high tea at the Press Club. The guests, who were given attractive merchandise, also heard Pranab Mukherjee, a good friend of Subhash Gupte, speak exclusively about the legendary legspinner.“I got the idea two years back and drew up the plan. Sunny Singh (Yajurvindra) liked the concept and gave the cricketing and commercial touches to it. I had thought of a two-day tour because there is so much to see in Mumbai, but he made it a one-day programme, and it was the right decision because everyone was tired by the end of the tour,” Braganza tells Wisden India. “This could not have come together without the support of our anchors Milind Wagle and S Kishore, and all eminent guests who took out time from their schedule on a long weekend and spoke with passion.”“There are so many things happening in Mumbai and every time overseas fans like Barmy Army come on a cricket tour, they enquire about ways through which they can experience the rich history of Indian cricket,” Yajurvindra says. “That is what inspired me to get involved.”As you can imagine, it was not an easy tour to put together. It took some effort to bring all stakeholders together — many speakers dropped out at the last minute — and get all the necessary permissions. The organisers needed at least 40 people on the air-conditioned bus to match their estimated expenditure of Rs 2 lakh, which they could not achieve.A state cricket association, who Braganza doesn’t want to name, confirmed 50 seats, but the calculations went haywire when they cancelled their plan just three days before the day of the tour.“That association representative came over to Mumbai to negotiate with us and based on their word I booked an extra bus, but they opted out at the last minute,” Braganza adds. “I cancelled that bus, but we had to curtail our giveaways by almost half. We had not approached sponsors this time because we did not have a product on hand. For the next time, we will have something concrete with which to approach corporates.”Braganza and Yajurvindra want to take the concept pan-India and extend it to children, as they believe kids are the right target market for the legacy of India’s cricket culture to stay on the positive side of the ledger. They could not accommodate kids this time because of rules at various clubs such as the CCI, who don’t permit kids to enter certain areas.Their immediate targets are Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata, cities with strong cricketing roots. They also want to make the Mumbai chapter a regular affair, with the second one planned for October 30. While there is no dearth of optimism in their step, the duo is completely aware that there is a lot of ground to be covered before scaling things up. And, the support from the Board of Control for Cricket in India is the least they will need.“Frankly, it was quiet disappointing that everyone like CCI, MCA, other clubs and former cricketers showed interest and bought into our passion, but nothing came from BCCI,” Yajurvindra reveals. “We wrote to them, but got no response. It would have been such a wonderful thing to take the guests to BCCI’s first-floor office at Wankhede and show them the major trophies India has won.”As an isolated event, the CHT counts for little in the milieu of events that dot the urban landscape, but in the larger context, it is yet another independent venture towards reviving cricket history in the country. Add the CHT to Rohan Pate’s Blades of Glory cricket museum in Pune, PR Man Singh’s private collections in Hyderabad and Jayantilal Mahendra’s Cricketer’s Hut in Chennai, and there is a lot of meat in the movement to fill in an unfortunate void.Yajurvindra feels that there is scope for such experiential ideas to be a part of mainframe cricket consumption in India, like it is in Australia and England.“Indians love history. We have always liked it, as is evident in the popularity of Gita, Mahabharata and Ramayana,” he shares. “When you are in cricket groups, you can feel the enthusiasm. Everyone necessarily need not have played cricket, but it’s the enthusiasm that counts. Because of our population, the percentage of people in India who want to go in-depth is big. We need to exploit that and spread the word about what cricket was, and how it came about to Virat Kohli at the end of the day.”“There is enough cricket literature in this country, but we have strayed away,” adds Braganza. “Whoever has the literature is in the 50-plus age-group. There is no encouragement from the board either. The last book the BCCI produced was for the golden jubilee. The platinum jubilee was totally forgotten.”This brings us to a pertinent question. When will the BCCI smell the coffee? It was reported in 2013 that Adam Chadwick, the curator of the Lord’s Cricket museum in London, would start work on the BCCI’s museum, which was estimated to cost Rs 10 crore. Nothing seemed to have moved, and the museum committee was scrapped in November last year.Till the parent body takes up the mandate of spreading cricket literature across the country as a priority, more power to the likes of CHT, Blades of Glory and Cricketer’s Hut.
Source: wisdenindia.com
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