MCA's indoor cricket facility

[PaiN_KiLLeR]

MCA’S INDOOR SCHOOL OPENS Pradeep Vijayakar I TNN Mumbai: Political bigwigs, former players, coaches and cricket Board officials were left in awe when the Mumbai Cricket Association’s world class indoor cricket facility was inaugurated at the Bandra Kurla Cricket Complex on Friday evening. Indian cricket team’s first computer analyst ‘Ramki’ S Ramakrishnan, whose firm Sportsmechanics (India) assembled the computer facility at the centre explained the process of elearning in cricket to the Maharashtra chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal former MCA president Manohar Joshi, Test players Madhav Apte, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sachin Tendulkar, Mohd Azharuddin. An excited BCCI chief Sharad Pawar kept repeating some of the things he said. After the visits of the hi-profile dignitaries, it was the turn of the cricketing gurus to have a look at the facility. Dav Whatmore, National Cricket Academy director of operations, and his support staff physio Paul Chapman, former India pacer and chief coach of the MRF Pace Academy, TA Sekhar, Indian team fitness trainer Greg King, all took a look at the work stations. (Physio John Gloster was absent as he was getting engaged at a South Mumbai hotel). Ramki set the ball rolling with a bowling video of Test discard Balaji and Sekhar showed Whatmore what was wrong, breaking the images—leading arm and coordination. Whatmore felt even the NCA could do with such a facility. “It is the best I have seen,’’ he opined. The former Lanka and Bangladesh coach felt the bowling run-up at the indoor facility could have been longer but Sekhar argued almost 90% of the normal length had been covered. King settled the debate saying he had not seen such a long run up anywhere else. Ramki wasn’t finished yet. “The indoor facility at Lougborough was said to be the best. I think this one is far better. It has two more pitches than Loughborough’s five. The area, 38 x 28 metres and height 8.5 metres, is by far bigger and the ceiling is higher,’’ he pointed out. Wind controls and temperature simulation are the other added attractions. Lauding the architects for the attractive interiors at the work station, Ramki indicated what separated this centre from the rest in the world was the e-learning facility. “A coach sitting here can monitor a young player playing in a rural area. All you need is an internet connection.’’ Ramki demonstrated it by communicating from the work station on the first floor of the indoor school to his office in Chennai where he interacted with his deputy Dhananjay. India fast bowler of the 40s GR Sunderam, among the first Indians to train at the famous Alf Gover’s School in the UK, had a query for Ramki: ‘Are there different pitches—turners, flat and fast tracks—as they had at Gover’s School?’ Ramki said the surfaces were made in such a way that the bounce would be different. “There is a common complaint of fast bowlers that their legs pain because of the hard underfoot conditions. Not so here. They have rubber cushions laid so that the floor is easy on the legs of the fast bowlers.’’ Pic-

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