The year was 1988, the venue, Berri in South Australia, and it was show time.
Back then it was more like a cricket carnival coming to town. The teams for the inaugural under-19 World Cup down under actually marched through the streets of Berri with placards bearing the names of the participating countries.
They were egged on by enthusiastic crowds that had gathered on sidewalks.
It was a different era then and the ambience was informal, filled with an air of festivity that small towns so invariably bring with them.
Recalling the occasion, M. Senthilnathan, captain of the first Indian team in the under-19 World Cup, told The Hindu , “It was wonderful. We were not on any ground but were so close to people on the streets. We could see the joy on their faces.”
The game then was also clinging on to the glorious amateur era. The teams were not put up in any hotel.
Senthilnathan said, “Two members of every side stayed with a local family. Every team was distributed around the town like that with families taking care of them. Berri was around 230 km from Adelaide, there were also matches in other towns nearby. Only the semifinals and final were played in Adelaide.”
The Indian squad had some promising cricketers such as Venkatapathy Raju, Narendra Hirwani, Subroto Banerjee, Senthilnathan, Pravin Amre, Nayan Mongia and Ranjib Biswal.
The inimitable Vasu Paranjpe was the coach-cum-manager of the side.
“There was no dearth of ability in the side. Hirwani was already a star by then, having taken a record 16 wickets on his debut against the West Indies in the Madras Test earlier in the year. I still remember television channels and radio stations wanting interviews with him. Hirwani was able to answer them only in Hindi so we had someone translating for him,” remembered Senthilnathan.
It was a World Cup from where many future stars would emerge. Recollected Senthilnathan, “We had Brian Lara, Jimmy Adams and Ridley Jacobs with the West Indian team, Inzamam-ul-Haq, Basit Ali, Mushtaq Ahmed and Aaqib Javed played for Pakistan, Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Mark Ramprakash and Chris Lewis turned out for England, Chris Cairns represented New Zealand, and Sanath Jayasuriya, Sri Lanka.”
Apart from the hard fought matches — the competition was eventually won by Australia — lasting friendships were formed.
So much so that when Lara met an Indian cricketer on a tour of the West Indies subsequently, the first question he asked was, “How’s Senthil doing?”
Beset with fitness concerns, India failed to make it to the semifinals but it was nevertheless a memorable outing for the side.
As Senthilnathan put it across nicely, “It was a journey of discovery for us in the first cricketing event of its kind.”
