Sanmar’s pride, Jolly Rovers Cricket Club, the team the group has supported for the last 25 years, staged a brilliant last minute coup in the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association’s senior division league after trailing Globe Trotters in the points table for most of the season.
In a thrilling finish, the Sanmar team pipped the opposition at the post to run away with the title for a record five times in a row. The achievement assumes greater significance, when viewed in the background of Jolly Rovers’ tally of 14 league titles in the last 25 years. The championship was decisively won only in the last league encounter of the season, a convincing victory over SICAL (South India Corporation Ltd) in October 2004, at the Vivekananda College grounds.
Kulamani Parida and S Badrinath, heroes of the last league match of the season.
It was a superb team effort, though off spinner Kulamani Parida and batsman S Badrinath played stellar roles in the last match of the season. Several outstanding performances through the season were responsible for the record success of the team.
Captain and leading left arm spinner R Ramkumar, India players Sujith Somasundar, Tinu Yohannan, Lakshmipathi Balaji, Dinesh Mongia and Hemang Badani, Vasanth Saravanan, Badrinath, Vikram Kumar, Ajay Kudua, Parida and Tamil Kumaran were some of the consistent performers who brought Jolly Rovers glory. For N Sankar, N Kumar, Vijay Sankar and the team management consisting of Bharat Reddy, Abdul Jabbar and Ram Mohan Rao, it was one of the proudest moments of their association with the group’s flagship team.
The triumphant Jolly Rovers team. From L to R: (standing) Arun (Scorer), Ram Mohan Rao (Asst Manager), Tamil Kumaran, K Parida, A Kudua, S Badrinath, Bharat Reddy (Manager), Tinu Yohannan, Vikram Kumar, Vasanth Saravanan, Abdul Jabbar (Coach), Padmanabhan (Physical Trainer). (Seated): H Badani, S Somasundar, L Balaji, N Sankar, N Kumar, Vijay Sankar, R Ramkumar (Captain), D Mongia. (Squatting): Vetrivel, R Venkatesh, Saravanan, Sriram, Syed Mohammed, Senthil Kumar, Deepak Varma.
Parida and Badrinath being chaired by their
team-mates.
Harbhajan Singh and Anil Kumble are both
past members of the Chemplast team.