Be it early mornings or late afternoon — at times even under floodlights — whenever you cross a vacant plot in the suburbs or the famed maidans in south Mumbai, you will witness scores of kids in whites trying to perfect their basic skill-sets. No wonder then that school cricket has been touted as the backbone of Mumbai having emerged as Indian cricket’s nursery, especially for batsmen.
The two inter-school cricket tournaments — Harris Shield and Giles Shield — have for long served as a platform for scouting promising batsmen. Be it a Gavaskar or a Vengsarkar or a Tendulkar or a Rahane or a Rohit, all these greats were first noticed due to their exploits in inter-school cricket. But for the last few years, with educational institutions sprouting up as frequently as traffic signals and the custodians of school cricket paying no heed to basic quality, early rounds of the two prestigious tournaments have been virtually converted into a joke.
One such mockery was on display at the New Era Cricket Club plot on Azad Maidan on Wednesday. Seldom would a cricket match be more lopsided than the one between Swami Vivekanand International School (SVIS), Borivali, and Children’s Academy, Andheri. Batting first, SVIS, the alma mater of Rohit Sharma, plundered 761 for four in its allotted 45 overs, with Meet Mayekar hitting boundaries at will for 338 off 134 balls, including 56 fours and seven sixes.
Eleven blobs
If the first innings wasn’t an aberration to even book cricket, the second essay turned out to be even funnier as Children’s Academy was bundled out for seven runs off just six overs. What’s funnier — or tragic — is that all the seven runs came through extras, with the scoreboard displaying 11 blobs.
While cricket tragics and statistical nerds — and there are plenty in India — will remember the game for all sorts of meaningless records, the match is a glaring example why the cricket authorities — Mumbai Cricket Association and Mumbai Schools Sports Association — in the city should take a hard look at themselves.
No doubt it was just the first round of the Harris Shield (Under-16), but if all the batsmen struggle to get bat to ball, does the school deserve to be competing in the inter-school tournament? If you flip to the sports page of the daily and check brief scores of all the matches, a majority of matches are no-contests, which doesn’t augur well for the future of Mumbai cricket.
Not too long ago have we seen a classic case of rise and fall of Pranav Dhanawade, who scored 1,000 runs in an innings against a team full of kids and then could never repeat the heroics in a proper match thereafter. Perhaps it’s time to avoid more young souls like Dhanawade being given false confidence.
