Exciting Times for Maharashtra Cricket

These are interesting times for Maharashtra Cricket. With so much happening in the Maharashtra Cricket scene, sometimes I feel I should have stuck on and played for a few more seasons. Ever since Ajay Shirke, second son of one on Pune’s most illustrious businessmen, BG Shirke who is the Chairman of the Shirke Group of Companies, took over as the President of the Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA), I have seen the MCA take concrete steps for the all-round development of the sport in Maharashtra. With all due respects to the former President, Mr. Dnyaneshwar Agashe, I think his group had run its course and Maharashtra Cricket was ripe for change.
Ajay Shirke track record in Cricket administration shows that he is quite smart when it comes to developing Cricket academies. He started the Cadence Cricket Academy in Pune in the late 90’s. The academy now boasts of some excellent playing facilities as well as a very good team of coaches (former Maharashtra Captain and dynamic Cricketer Surendra Bhave as permanent coach and Kiwi David Trist as visiting coach). The Cadence Cricket team has developed from a fringe team to one of the better teams in Pune and will no doubt continue to show impressive growth.
As President of the MCA, Ajay Shirke was largely responsible for roping in Chandrakant Pandit as Cricket coach and Darren Holder as Cricket director. Both appointments happened late last year so I’m really keen on seeing how Chandu Pandit, whom I have played under while he was captain of Mahindra and for whom I have a very healthy respect in terms of his knowledge of the game and his canny understanding of situations, performs as coach. I am particularly interested in seeing how Darren Holder grows into his role as Cricket Director. The Aussie, who is a bachelor of health science from Griffith University (a course that I had applied for too) and is just 30 years old must surely be one of the youngest coaches in the Indian Cricket scene. Even though Darren is by and large untried and the MCA is taking a significant risk in making him Director, I think it is a step in the right direction. The only question that troubles me is that I believe there is a considerable overlap between their roles (Chandu and Darren). Both will be traveling with the team for all away matches and both will be present on the ground during training. I just hope they have clearly defined roles in this whole scheme.
Over the last season, some of the top players, especially from Mumbai (Munaf Patel and Sairaj Bahutule come to mind immediately) have moved to the Maharashtra side. Maharashtra also has Hrishikesh Kanitkar, Iqbal Siddiqui and Dheeraj Jadhav, all very high caliber players. This heady mix of an administration that is willing to spend (it must have been a significant wallop to the purse to get Chandu Pandit and Darren Holder, besides getting all these Mumbai players as well) and experiment, a coach and director who combine acute cricketing acumen and hard sport science knowledge and quality players should help Maharashtra step up their performance in the 2006/2007 season. Here’s wishing them well.