V Ramnarayan
It is a pleasure to watch a cricket match at the handsome IIT Sanmar ground, deep inside the IIT Madras campus, in sylvan surroundings far from the madding crowd. Manager Rammohan Rao, an old Chemplast and Jolly Rovers hand, is having kittens during a tense moment, while former cricket-in-charge Bharat Reddy, who is watching the match with me, is more relaxed. He has seen it all, as both player and administrator. Bharat, who is no longer associated with the team, since his move to ICL, considered the rebel league in India, joined the Group back in 1981-82, and has been responsible for the induction of many of the team’s star players.
In fact, two of the three Sanmar cricketers now touring New Zealand with the Indian team were Bharat Reddy finds.
A few other India players are in the background, as they are playing for the Sanmar team Jolly Rovers in today’s match—S Badrinath, Tinu Yohanan and Piyush Chawla. Others like Ajay Kudua, R Ramkumar and Vidyut Sivaramakrishnan, who have performed well at the zonal and junior levels, are also taking part in the knockout phase of the TNCA league in progress today, while old warhorse
D Vasu, unlucky not to be picked for India, is going strong for the Group’s other team in the league, Alwarpet Cricket Club. One of the latest finds, K Suthesh, is making waves, with a brilliant start in one-day Ranji Trophy matches.
He has been rewarded with a place in season II of the IPL, along with Tinu Yohanan, the young veteran fast bowler. Badri, Dinesh Kartik, Vijay, Balaji and Vidyut are among the other Sanmar players in the IPL squads. This is sometimes a problem of plenty, as all these players may not be available for crucial local matches for the Group.
The Sanmar pavilion, dedicated some years ago by left handed Australian great Neil Harvey, may look like an old English pavilion, but it has the latest conveniences for the players—nice showers, a lovely view and plenty of space to stretch before and after the game. Every care is taken to offer nutritious food to players—both the home team and the visitors. It may all seem like pampering but the players are put through a tough regimen of training and practice so that they are constantly match sharp.
You will have to go back to the 1960s and 70s to find an equivalent to the kind of contribution Sanmar is making to Indian cricket in terms of the number of players selected for the national squad. Mumbai teams like ACC, Mafatlal and Nirlon sometimes had more than one representative in the Indian Test team, and JK XI, which lasted on the scene for a mere couple of years, had three of its players touring New Zealand and West Indies in 1976, but Sanmar holds a unique position in the pantheon of major cricket patrons in India by supporting the game consistently for over four decades.
M Vijay, L Balaji and Dinesh Kartik, now touring New Zealand, are unanimous in praising the excellent facilities and encouragement the Group has given them, allowing them to focus completely on their game. Vijay and Balaji were entirely home grown products, having been talent spotted by Bharat Reddy, the man who had been in charge of the cricket team until a couple of years ago.
M Vijay , Another fine young Sanmar cricketer, leg spinner Piyush Chawla, praises Sanmar’s professional approach to the game, and the camaraderie in the team. “Playing in the competitive TNCA league keeps me in good practice. I bowl to some top batsmen here and that will
make my comeback into the Indian team easier when it happens,” he says. “I have no doubt I’ll come back,” Piyush adds.
Dinesh Kartik , L Balaji
S Badrinath, desperately unlucky not to be on the flight to New Zealand with the Indian cricket team, is a Chemplast and Jolly Rovers mainstay, who has been scoring tons of runs in domestic cricket. “I have enjoyed my cricket with Chemplast,” he says. “I came to this team after a season with SPIC in the senior division. The atmosphere is friendly and cheerful, and the facilities are excellent, world class. My coaches Abdul Jabbar—recently retired as Chemplast coach—and Jaikumar, Bharat Reddy and Rammohan, our manager, were always there for me as I grew up as a cricketer. The three tours of England with the Sanmar team helped us develop as cricketers and prepared us for tours with the Indian team.”
The coaches contend that these tours have helped refine the players on and off the field. According to them, “They learn how to carry themselves in the social context, thereby gaining great confidence as individuals. Sanmar has contributed substantially to Tamil Nadu cricket by grooming so many young cricketers over the decades. The players are also under no pressure from the management to perform. There is no direct contact between the players and the top management and the cricketers are treated as professionals.
N Sankar, the Chairman, balances praise and criticism well. During a five-year period, the team did not perform very well, yet there was not a whisper from the management. They are given enough space to work hard and find their own ways of performing and winning.”
The Sanmar Group Chairman N Sankar, gives much of the credit to Bharat Reddy’s man management and talent spotting skills (See interview). Reddy himself is happy to share the credit with the talented batsman Ajay Kudua, who has taken over Bharat’s role from him, and the coach and support staff who have done Chemplast proud over the years. In addition to the superb IIT-Chemplast cricket ground and infrastructure, in both cricket and physical fitness terms, the teams enjoy a fullfledged support team in a physio, trainer and masseur. The present coach, Jaikumar, an outstanding pace bowler for Kerala in his playing days, has been a coach since 2001 and a fully qualified one since 2005. Strangely, Jaikumar has recently specialised as a batting coach, working closely with the top batsmen of the team.
To quickly run through some of the stats which have made the Sanmar cricket teams such a force to reckon with, it has won the Palayampatti Shield for the TNCA I Division league a record 15 Crickettimes. It has contributed more than 25 cricketers to the Indian team.
On more than one occasion, it swept all before it—the league, the Hindu Trophy, Moin-ud-Dowla, KSCA, Escorts Cup, Arlem Trophy, and Mumbai Corporate Cup are among the all India successes of the Sanmar teams.
The total domination of the league and Hindu Trophy soon after the management took over the running of Jolly Rovers back in 1965 has perhaps been unequalled by any team, except perhaps the Sanmar team of the 1980s.
Bharat Reddy was a member of the Indian squad which competed in the 1979 World Cup in England, and also toured Australia with the Indian team. B Arun, a fast medium bowler, played for India.
L Sivaramakrishnan, the leg spinner who starred in India’s triumphs in the World Championship of Cricket in Australia and the CBFS series in Sharjah, was a member of the Chemplast Sanmar team when first selected to play for India.
Batsmen Robin Singh, T E Srinivasan and V B Chandrasekar, and Test opening bowlers T A Sekar and Harvinder Singh represented Chemplast teams as did Arshad Ayub, the former Hyderabad and India off spinner. Sunil Valson, a member of India’s World Cup winning team of 1983, played for Chemplast too. Former India captain S Venkataraghavan was a member of the Jolly Rovers team which won the league championship in the 1960s. Sujith Somasundar who opened the innings for Jolly Rovers in the TNCA league was another who played for India. Other Indian cricketers to have turned out for the Chemplast team include Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh and Debashis Mohanty. Coming back to the present, the match is approaching a crucial phase, and the depth of concentration of the players is palpable. Gone are the back slapping ways of even a few moments ago, and a focus befi tting the tenseness of the situation replaces the cheering and war cries when the team was cruising. To a man, the players are chasing every ball, making diving stops and maintaining the tightness of the noose around the batsmen’s necks. This ability to rise to the occasion differentiates the champion teams from the fl ashes in the pan and entertainers. It sums up the Jolly Rovers- Chemplast spirit over the years: plenty of fl air and charisma, but more important, hard-nosed performance when the chips are down.
Veterans Remember
To understand how cricket in the sixties was different, listen to these stories by a couple of Jolly Rovers veterans. K R Rajagopal, the fl amboyant wicket keeper batsman was to open the innings for Madras in a Ranji Trophy match against Hyderabad with Belliappa, his Jolly Rovers and state captain, due to start at Madras, but was unsure whether he would be relieved from his offi cial duties as an engineer working at the India Cements foundry operated at distant Nandambakkam. Came the morning of the match, and he was right in the thick of action at the foundry, having been there all night, his German boss showing no understanding of the importance of the match to him or sympathy for his plight. A chance visit by Managing Director K S Narayanan to the foundry enabled Raja to make it to the ground in the nick of time. KSN had Raja released from duty and put him in a car with instructions to the driver to deposit him at the ground in time for the start of the match. When Raja entered the ground without his cricket kit, Belliappa, on his way to the toss, had struck his name off the list, fearing he was not going to make it. He added his name back just in time for the formal exchanging of the lists of players by the two captains. Belliappa won the toss, Rajagopal opened the innings with him, in completely borrowed gear, and scored a swashbuckling hundred! B Kalyanasundaram, Kalli to all, has several fond memories of his stint with Jolly Rovers, too. He was so much in awe of his seniors when he joined, that he felt no human could lead such a galaxy of stars. One particular captain was Ramamurthy, who Kalli puts in the Mike Brearley class of captain with modest credentials as a player, but a shrewd man manager. On one occasion, Ramamurthy completely reversed the batting order and Jolly Rovers ended up all out for 135 or so. In reply, Alwarpet CC were cruising at 90 for 1, when Kalli struck gold to dismiss them for 111. One memorable occasion was when Kalli reached the ground early—a rare event in Kalli’s career—for a Buchi Babu match in 1971 and the police, there to control a huge crowd gathered to watch Sunil Gavaskar just back from the West Indies, refused to let him in, not recognising him. The Jolly Rovers marker Manickam had to rescue him by informing the policeman what an important member of the team Kalli was. A great fan of Raja, Kalli has a special word or two of praise for some of his less known teammates like K Ganapathi, P S Narayanan, K Bharadwaj and A K Vijayaraghavan. All in all, playing for Jolly Rovers gave Kalli and colleagues a heady feeling.
Excerpts from a conversation with
N Sankar, Chairman, The Sanmar Group
V Ramnarayan
How did you come to sponsor cricket with such passion, when you have been a keen amateur tennis player?
Cricket was always my first love. It’s only after I fell seriously ill when I was around 17, and could not play competitive cricket any more, that I took to playing tennis. Love for cricket was in my blood. Before me, Father (K S Narayanan) was a keen enthusiast. With the help of Ananthanarayan, Chief Cost Accounts Officer in India Cements, a former Ranji Trophy player and a moving spirit behind cricket in the company, Father ran a cricket team in India Cements, mainly for fun. In the mid-sixties, we took over Jolly Rovers, a TNCA first division league team, taking cricket sponsorship seriously. Those days public sector banks like SBI and IOB were the main sponsors of domestic cricket. Other public sector corporations also supported the game. For some reason, the ITI Bangalore cricket team had players leaving it en masse. The General Manager of ITI asked Father to take some players if he could accommodate them. K R Rajagopal and Najam Husain were among them. Rajagopal was feared as a batsman. He struck terror in the hearts of bowlers who ran afoul of him. P K Belliappa, the Madras captain and stalwart batsman-wicket keeper, was a well known cricketer who joined. Test off spinner S Venkataraghavan, who later led India, also joined us. At one stage, we had eight to nine players in the state side.
Father wanted to build a good team. The players also worked as officers in the company, with responsibility in sales, as engineers, combining work with cricket. The team developed and grew into a very strong one.
We won the league in the first year. In 1967-68, we won ten out of the 11 matches we played. Those days, the league was of a single day, the matches mostly ending in draws. To gain ten first innings leads in 11 games was outstanding. We could have won the 11th game too, but the ICF last pair held out for about an hour.
Those days, Father and Mr S K Chettur, who first supported cricket while at the helm in SBI and later continued to do so in IOB, used to watch so many matches together.
In the 1970s, there were problems in the cement industry and internal issues in the company. Father could no longer devote time to cricket. Though India Cements continued to support cricket, it was a dull phase.
In 1978-79, I joined Chemplast as Managing Director and took on the sponsorship of Jolly Rovers. We then hired new players with the help of Mr M Subramaniam. We recruited some young players. India Cements backed out hereabouts. Father too retired. It was in the 1990s that Mr N Srinivasan came back to India Cements and resumed cricket sponsorship there. Since, then both India Cements and Chemplast have supported cricket and produced champion teams.
Did you watch a lot of matches?
Yes I did. There were some unique matches. During a Buchi Babu match against ACC, Bombay, at the Marina cricket ground, there was a riot—against Jolly Rovers, the local team! We were so dominant there was a reaction against it. Crowds supported the underdog. There was another episode at Chepauk, when umpire Ghouse was assaulted.
Can you compare Jolly Rovers cricket then and now?
We were a dominant side in the 1960s. Belliappa, Raja, Venkat, Kalyanasundaram, George Thomas… it was a formidable combination. Those days, jobs in the private sector were valued commodities among cricketers. There was no livelihood in cricket. All the players worked in the office. When Chemplast got into sponsorship in 1978, we were in a cusp—the cricketer employees were playing a lot of cricket and therefore spending less time at the office. By now the first division league matches began to be of two days’ duration, to be increased to three days in the 1990s. The cricketers could no longer do a proper job at the office. At the same time, we had to look after them after their cricketing days. It was a difficult period. We had to do a lot of balancing to make sure they had a career after cricket.
By the mid 1990s, the scenario changed completely. Young people could make a career out of cricket—as players, coaches, commentators.
The investment on cricket grew substantially.
Yes, the cost of equipment increased. More than that, the cost of players grew substantially. It is a professional game. The players play cricket almost full time. They attend coaching and fitness programmes morning and evening. They are extremely busy. It is difficult to expect them to work at the office. In fact, none of them do.
What is the secret of the team’s consistent success, even in the absence of stars?
In the first few seasons, we completely dominated local cricket because of the star players we had in the team. (K R Rajagopal, Belliappa, Najam Husain, P K Dharmalingam, P S Narayanan, K S Vaidyanathan, K Bharadwaj, Balaji Rao, K V R Murthi, V R Rajaraghavan, A K Vijayaraghavan and B Kalyanasundaram were some of the players who made Jolly Rovers such a force to reckon with). Later, I will attribute it to Bharat Reddy, who brought a couple of players from State Bank of India to start with. He is responsible for the tough cricket Jolly Rovers plays, and for the team spirit. He has done a great job. It is unfortunate that because of his association with ICL, Bharat had to leave and is no longer associated
with us, except as a well-wisher. From the mid 1990s, India Cements have also been a dominant player, along with us.
Our sponsorship is not commercial, we are doing it for the love of cricket, though there is some corporate advertising. It calls for a lot of commitment to keep going at this level of expense. The issue is that we have on board players whom we pay salaries through the year, while they are available to play only a few games for us, not even 50% of our matches.
What are the problems you face in running cricket teams?
One of the problems is that the star players are often not available, because they are away on national or state duty. In the early days, league teams were granted postponements when these players were on national duty. Nowadays, it is a disadvantage to have state and India players, as no such postponements are granted.
What do you gain from sponsoring cricket?
Our sponsorship is not commercial, as we do not sell a product like tyres or cement. We are doing it for the love of cricket, though there is some corporate advertising. Given that, it calls for a lot of commitment to keep going at this level of expense. Now, we have a league match next week, and three of our players are in New Zealand and Badri is playing in the Deodhar Trophy. Our team is gutted. We have some bench strength no doubt, but it does not reflect our true strength.
Do you have second thoughts about going on at this level of sponsorship?
I have had second thoughts over the years. The whole scene has changed, especially since the emergence of IPL last year. It has changed the dynamics dramatically. Many of our players have been selected for IPL teams—Badri, Vijay, Vidyut, Balaji, Dinesh Kartik and today Suthesh and Tinu Yohanan. It is a lucrative option for the players, as the numbers in IPL are mind boggling. At the same time, these options are only available to seven or eight people. I don’t know how the future will pan out. It is evolving.
The issue is that we have on board players whom we pay salaries through the year, while they are available to play only a few games for us, not even 50% of our matches.
It happened in the case of Anil Kumble and Harbhajan Singh.
That was expected, but they probably played more for us than today’s players, because there was less cricket then. They only went away to play Ranji Trophy and Test cricket. Today, there is a lot more cricket being played.
ICL took away a number of players, too.
Yes, that was the other problem. It has been a very unfortunate development, this dispute between ICL and BCCI. I hope it is soon resolved. We need more ICLs.IPL can take care of 40 players or so at best. We are denying the rest a chance to earn a living. I do hope the problem gets resolved.
What is the most important contribution Sanmar has made to cricket?
Jolly Rovers and our other team Alwarpet Cricket Club have been nurseries of cricket talent. We have produced nearly 30 international cricketers. Many of them are our discoveries. Full marks to Bharat and his team, who spot talent at various levels. Balaji, Vijay, Suthesh and Badri are examples from the current batch.
And the facilities?
We took over the IIT ground some ten years ago. We always wanted a home ground. The first attempt at the University Union did not last long. The same thing happened at Vivekananda College. When we develop a world class cricket ground, we cannot have it used for other purposes. IIT gave us a chance and we have developed a real state-of-the-art ground. Many international players have played there, the women’s World Cup took place there. The Indian team has trained there and was even selected there, when Chandu Borde was chairman of selectors. Yuvraj Singh was selected there.
There are restrictions now on players from other states taking part in the TNCA league.
Yes, there is a TNCA ruling restricting outstation players. It is acceptable if the rule is consistent. In IPL, you have players from all over the country and the world. We have to recognise whether it is a profession or a sport still.
Did our standards improve when more other state players played here?
Certainly. The standard improved dramatically when they all came and played here. Chennai has perhaps the best organised league in India. Players want to come and compete here. They get excellent match practice. The one-year residency rule makes it difficult for them.
Chemplast used to compete in tournaments outside the state.
It still does, but nowadays our key players have to skip them when they are selected for the country or IPL. The number of tournaments and participation are coming down in the current economic scenario as well. Yes, in the past, we won many tournaments.
Looking back, do you have a sense of accomplishment?
Certainly. We have done a lot for cricket. Going forward, I am not so sure how it will all unfold. The whole game has changed. The ambience has changed. Now cricket is itself a profession, far more lucrative than a job elsewhere. Is there a role for people like us who sponsor amateur cricketers? Perhaps a new role will evolve.
Catch them Young
Promoting and recognising talent in the Under 14 category in cricket, Sanmar sponsored the P C Sekhar Memorial Boys Under-14 Cricket Tournament.
28 schools participated in the tournament. P S B B Senior Secondary School,
K K Nagar, the winners took home the trophy while P S Senior Secondary School qualified for the runners up trophy.
The winners: P S B B Senior Secondary School, K K Nagar
Runners up: P S Senior Secondary School
Jolly Rovers regained the Palayampatti Shield for the TNCA first division league beating Vijay CC of India Cements. They were runners up the last three years in a row. This win is extra special for Sanmar and Rovers, as they had to play the fancied Vijay with a team depleted by as many as six senior players being absent – L Balaji, Dinesh Kartik and M Vijay on India duty in New Zealand and R Suthesh, Tinu Yohanan and Piyush Chawla being called away for IPL preparations. Rovers, with a number of youngsters pressed into service, displayed dedication and excellent team work throughout the match. Almost all members of the team contributed with bat or ball.