Seeking another Sachin Tendulkar: Decisive action by Mumbai Cricket Association can stymie city's current slide

When will Mumbai produce the next Sachin Tendulkar? That’s the question the Cricket Improvement Committee (CIC) of Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) needs to ask rather than pondering over the city’s dismal performance in the Ranji Trophy season of 2018-19. Mumbai’s CIC had supposedly met a few former cricketers last week to discuss the city’s fall from grace, in recent times, in domestic cricket. Forty-one times Ranji Trophy champions, Mumbai had crashed out of the national championships this year, ignominiously at the league stage. Managing just one outright win in eight games, the supposedly ‘star-studded’ team had garnered only 17 points with two losses and five drawn matches in the league. Vidarbha, once a cellar team, topped Mumbai’s group with 29 points along with Saurashtra. Off course, the Nagpur based team had won the Ranji Trophy last season. But what has irked Mumbaikars more is that the team has been propelled to the top by outstanding batting performances from Mumbai discard, Wasim Jaffer, who is now on the wrong side of 30 and still going strong. I do not know what transpired in the CIC meeting but I can safely say that the performance and the failings of the team per se, and the individuals, would have been discussed threadbare. Having played in Mumbai for a dozen seasons — five of them as a Ranji probable — and having worked as a sub-committee member, talent-hunter and coach at the grassroots level for MCA, I can say with a fair bit of confidence that larger issues that are hurting the city’s cricket wouldn’t have been touched upon at all. Why is it that post-mortems of this sort always look for scapegoats rather than accepting blame and vowing to set right systemic breakdowns? [caption id=“attachment_6009881” align=“alignnone” width=“825”] Rather than tinkering with the game, and blaming each other for the rock bottom that the city’s cricket has hit, MCA should strive to find another Sachin Tendulkar. Illustration courtesy Austin Coutinho[/caption] There was a time, not too long ago, when the city had so much talent that some of its discards could easily walk into the playing elevens of most other state teams in the Ranji Trophy. On how many occasions has Mumbai won the coveted trophy with six to eight of their best players on national duty? It is therefore surprising now that even with Rohit Sharma, Ajinkya Rahane, Shreyas Iyer, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shardul Thakur and Prithvi Shaw being available off and on to its Ranji side, Mumbai hasn’t been able to enter the knockout stage of the national championships. Times have changed. First class players are well paid. When you play cricket for the country, however, you enter a different league altogether; it is called the fame and fortune club. A li’l bird tells me that most capped players, who have made a name for themselves, find it bothersome to play for the state team and perform. Could this be one reason why Mumbai has done badly this season? The city has always had great cricket coaches. Ramakant Achrekar, VS Patil, Vasant Amladi, Anna Vaidya and many others worked selflessly to mentor some great talent for the state and country; almost without any compensation. I really wonder how many of them would have passed BCCI’s coaching examinations. They would surely have earned a hundred percent marks for their dedication, though. I would love to know from the MCA if the coaches on their payroll, at various levels, are the best available in the city. Is there a process set up to find and select the best coaches? From what I have noticed over the years, most of Mumbai’s talented and qualified coaches shy away from the coaching assignments of the association. Pressures of various kinds could be one reason; what irks most of them, however, is the arbitrariness in picking and sacking of coaches. Most mentors therefore prefer to set up their own academies and grassroots development in the city is therefore left largely in private hands. In order that there is constant monitoring of school-level talent, has the MCA ever considered providing affiliation to private academies and coaching centres with the association? This would be a good alternative to setting up MCA coaching centres at various places in the city. Of course, MCA norms would have to be followed for accreditation with respect to facilities, coach education, participation in tournaments etc., besides the academies being ruled by the MCA fee structure. This scheme would help MCA find talent and provide financial freedom and job satisfaction to coaches. Does Mumbai have a ‘Centre of Excellence’, where the best 25 players in the city are allowed to practice, round the year, and learn the ropes from outstanding coaches, fitness trainers, analysts, dieticians and mind-trainers? I had played a small part in Shaw’s career, as a talent hunter, by recommending special attention on him after I had seen him scoring a hundred when he was just nine. I do not really know how much the MCA paid heed to my advice or if Shaw was given special attention at all during the last nine years. Special talent requires special facilities, and MCA should know that. Just around the turn of the millennium, I was a member of the MCA coaching sub-committee. In one meeting, chaired by a former Test cricketer, I presented a paper on how coaching centres could be set up on a zonal basis, privately, to operate through the year and not just during the summer vacations. The chairman glanced through the paper, folded it and put it in his trouser pocket. My proposal probably ended up in some dustbin. A few days later I was made member of the office-tournaments sub-committee. Initiatives like the SBI Bowlers Scheme and the MCA-Mafatlal Bowling Scheme, with the help of Frank Tyson, have paid rich dividends to Mumbai’s cricket. Some really good talent came out of both projects. Why can’t similar initiatives, with the help of sponsors, be introduced by MCA for finding batsmen and spinners too? Various new infrastructure projects being set up in the city have disrupted the cricket tournament structure of Mumbai. MCA would therefore do well to spread out matches on grounds that lie unutilised in the suburbs. ‘Opportunity to play’ should be the prime objective of the MCA. The Kanga League too should be made playable, despite showers, and ground authorities should be made responsible for cancelled matches. Rather than tinkering with the game, and blaming each other for the rock bottom that the city’s cricket has hit, MCA should strive to find another Sachin Tendulkar. Easier said than done, for a player of his quality comes once in hundred years; but if the city puts in the effort to find 10 players, every year, who are half as good as Tendulkar, through their grassroots programmes, Mumbai will be hard to beat in the times to come. The least therefore we can do for the city of dreams that has produced legends like Vijay Merchant, Dilip Sardesai, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sachin Tendulkar and so many others is to dream big; aim for the sky. If we can’t get a piece of the sky, we’ll surely pick up some clouds! The author is a caricaturist and sportswriter. A former fast bowler and coach, he has mentored quite a few first-class cricketers.