Mood optimistic on eve of NCA's inauguration

The National Cricket Academy carnival is in town with all decks cleared for the formal inauguration on Monday at the Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore. During a brief but freewheeling chat in his hotel lobby, the affable Hanumant Singh, Director of the NCA, did not restrict himself to Academy matters but also waxed aloud on his own playing days. A man of many parts - Test cricketer, manager on tours abroad, coach of the Kenyan team, ICC match referee and now NCA Director, Hanumant touched upon his knock of 94 against Australia in Madras in 1964-65 which is closer to his heart than even his century on debut against England and also mentioned his role as a substitute for England(!) in a Test at Bombay in 1963-64.

He was however a bit cagey about revealing any details on the functioning of the NCA. Hanumant's gist was that they were still in the process of threshing out all the finer points and it was only after consultation with Rodney Marsh and others that the final scheme of things would be drawn up. Marsh is coordinating events from the ACA's side and the schedule drawn up for him includes inspecting all the facilities at the KSCA and SAI grounds followed by separate interviews with all the 24 trainees and overseeing their early progress over the next couple of days.

Hanumant did provide a few morsels of information though, saying that the training semester will comprise four months of intensive grind, until August, after which the trainees will participate in a couple of tournaments including the Buchi Babu in Chennai. The second batch of 20 trainees will be arriving for a three week camp from May 15. The selection of the trainees was made by a panel consisting of the Director, the two coaches, Roger Binny and Vasu Paranjpe, the Chairmen of the senior and junior selection committees, Chandu Borde and Rajinder Goel, besides consulting with others. Hanumant said that the demarcation of the two batches was not on the basis of age, it was just that the first group comprises of fringe players who are likely to press for selection in the next one year while the second group consists of longer term prospects.

At least four members of the five man NCA committee, comprising chairman Raj Singh Dungarpur, Polly Umrigar, Sunil Gavaskar, Brijesh Patel and S Venkataraghavan have arrived in the city. Patel, who is also the Secretary of the KSCA, said that the committee had been formed to formulate all the policies, finalise the coaches and in general to oversee all the formalities to actually get the academy started. He hinted that former greats like Prasanna, Bedi, Kirmani and Lillee would be among those invited to advise the trainees on specific aspects of the game.

Patel also said that all the facilities were not quite ready yet. The indoor practising facility is still in the pipeline and should be completed in the next two months while the gymnasium also needed to be upgraded. He was however happy with the selection process, stating that "as this is the first year and there was not much time, we've done a good job." Patel added that "we're not looking at real quantity at the moment but maybe some dropouts and some more can be included", holding the door open for other entrants. It would appear that although there are still some loose ends hanging about, the people behind this venture are adopting a flexible approach and having a suitably open mind on the issues at hand.