Former India stumper Farokh Engineer inaugurated two-lane artificial practice pitches that will be part of the expanded Indoor Cricket Academy at the Cricket Club of India (CCI). “The CCI is known only for cricket. It’s up there with any other top cricket ground in the world including Lord’s. I played the last Test here in 1973 before it took a long sabbatical; I made 121 and 66 against Tony Lewis’ England team,” said Engineer addressing the CCI executive members that included President Sevanti Parekh and Kapil Malhotra, CCI representative at BCCI meetings.
“This was the dream of Rajsingh Dungarpur. The height of the lane is low, but we can teach kids here. A full-fledged academy will be in place soon. We have bought two bowling machines and are going to have practice pitches at the East Lawn,” said Sachin Bajaj, executive committee member, CCI.
Mr. Parekh inaugurated the expanded and newly designed “All-rounder” restaurant with the ‘Chinaman’ being discarded. The walls of the “All-rounder” feature 7-ft high wall-paper graphics of all-rounder players like Imran Khan, Kapil Dev, Gary Sobers, Ian Botham and Jacques Kallis. Created by students of “ecole intuit.lab”, the city-based French institute of design and communications, the 7ft high graphics are actually made of hundreds of small images of the particular cricketer. “It’s good except that it does not have wicket-keeper-all-rounder,” quipped Engineer, who is also a member of the club.
