Within hours of Australian cricketer Phillip Hughes passing away on Thursday, Mumbai Cricket Association vice-president Ravi Savant received a lot of calls from parents concerned about the safety of their wards playing cricket in the Mumbai maidans.
Savant, on Friday, urged the young cricketers not to give up the sport and encouraged them to follow the legends of Mumbai who excelled in the pre-helmet era facing some of the most fearsome bowlers the world over.
“It only needs a fraction of a second to get out of the line of the ball. Youngsters should not be afraid to take part in cricket. What happened to Phil Hughes was an accident and accidents cannot be avoided,” Savant said at the MCA annual awards at the Sharad Pawar Indoor Cricket Academy and Recreation Centre, BKC, here.
Savant, also the BCCI vice-president, gave the examples of Mumbai stalwarts Vijay Merchant, Polly Umrigar, Sunil Gavaskar, Eknath Solkar, Dilip Vengsarkar and Ravi Shastri. “All great cricketers from Mumbai who took on bowlers like Charlie Griffith and Wes Hall, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, Imran Khan and Waqar Younis without adequate protective equipment. It shows how great our cricketing heroes are. Youngsters should look at these heroes and continue to play cricket,” Savant added.
Savant also said that MCA will not tolerate any indiscipline. “While it is not proper to talk about the spot-fixing and match-fixing issues as the matter is in the court, cricket is suffering from indiscipline. We in MCA will not tolerate any indiscipline and will deal with it,” Savant said.
The awards ceremony was the first after the restructuring of the Kanga League. “Over 80 years, Kanga League was played in monsoon. The main purpose was the Indian team leave for England to play on wet pitches there and for its players to get used to those conditions. However, pitches today are covered and cricket is not played on wet wickets. Times have changed and hence the need to restructure Kanga League,” Savant said. “Having said that, we have not forgotten the various Shields like the Purushottam Shield and these shields are awarded to each division.”
Earlier, Sharad Pawar, president of MCA, gave an introductory speech in which he paid his condolences to Hughes while also highlighting his association’s performances in the last season.
Awards were presented for achievements in various age groups and tournaments. There were also special awards including one to Rohit Sharma for his world record 264 runs in an ODI, Wasim Jaffer for most runs in Ranji Trophy, Ajit Agarkar and Amol Muzumdar for their recent retirements, and Dilip Vengsarkar for Lifetime Achievement.
Two talented cricketers from each of U-14, U-16, U-19 and U-19 (women) were awarded the Sharad Pawar Scholarship of Rs 37,500 each from the Rs 50 lakh corpus fund received for expenses during the 2011 World Cup by Pawar during his tenure as ICC president.
Prominent awards (2013-14 season): Aditya Tare (most runs in Ranji Trophy, 589 runs), Vishal Dabholkar (most wickets in Ranji Trophy, 39 wickets), Aditya Tare (fastest century, 122 runs in 134 balls), Ajinkya Rahane (best senior cricketer of the year), Sarfaraz Khan (best junior cricketer of the year), Tushar Deshpande (best fast bowler in U-19, 16 wickets in Cooch Behar), Prithvi Shaw (best junior cricketer, U-16), Nithesh Kothavle (Best junior cricketer for outstanding performance in U-16), Harshir Dafedar (Best junior cricketer in U-14), Mumbai U-14 team (West Zone winner), Mumbai senior women’s team (Plate division winner).
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