According to MCA vice-president Dilip Vengsarkar, Thomson will visit Mumbai in September before the start of the first-class season.
Jeff Thomson may not know the meaning of 'khadoos', but he would jolly well blend into the famed cricketing culture of the city. Perhaps, that's what prompted the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) to rope in the Australian pace legend as the face of its audacious talent hunt for bowlers, the launch of which took place at a SoBo hotel on Thursday.
The MCA-IDBI Federal Life Insurance Bowling Foundation aspires to "unearth excellent bowlers" who will do "both Mumbai and India proud". It's been a few years since the gharana of Indian batting produced a world-class bowler of any kind. It's therefore heartening to see the association get its priorities right by announcing a programme to address this problem. That said, it was disappointing to see association president Sharad Pawar and vice-president Ashish Shelar — both key politicians — skip the event.
According to MCA vice-president Dilip Vengsarkar, Thomson will visit Mumbai in September before the start of the first-class season. He will train 60 bowlers — 30 pacers and 30 spinners chosen by Mumbai coach Chandrakant Pandit and chief selector Milind Rege — from the Under-19 age group for a month. He will return to the city in May 2016 to coach the bowlers for another month. Thomson has inked a two-year deal with the association.
Any batsman who felt faint-hearted at the prospect of facing 'Thommo' was a goner. For someone who proclaimed that "I enjoy hitting a batsman more than getting him out" and "I like to see blood on the pitch", Thomson was an ultra-aggressive cricketer. Blessed with a killer instinct, an unusual slingshot action and phenomenal speed, he terrorised batsmen before forcing them into submission. Some 30 years after he last played a Test match, the 64-year-old will don the coach's hat for the sake of Mumbai cricket. This is nothing short of a coup as far as the MCA is concerned.
For the uninitiated, the Bombay Cricket Association-Mafatlal Bowling Scheme of the 1990s has helped unearth talents like Abey Kuruvilla, Salil Ankola, Paras Mhambrey, Bahutule and Nilesh Kulkarni. Frank Tyson was the coach then.
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