BENGALURU : Off late the women’s cricket team of Bangalore University (BU) has been doing very well. Last year they were the runner’s up in the annual South Zone Inter-University Women Cricket Championship and qualified for the national universities tourney. Before that, they came third in the south zonal’s again.
The women’s team was started in 1994, and after that, it functioned on and off says Srinivas G, manager of the BU women’s team since around 2001. “We came fourth in this year’s zonal tournament. We lost in the semifinals. There was a lot of stress and tension that the team could probably not take. We were at a very crucial stage but were not able to control the game matches, but it is ok. We will try next year. We can however, do much better if there are more professional players in our team and there are some changes in the process of recruiting the players,” says Srinivas.
For example, he points out that Madras University has as many as nine members who are state players. Another team from Krishna University in Andhra University has as many as seven professional players.
Karnataka, on the other hand, has around only four professional players, says Srinivas. He adds that students who join the sports quota, come for training by the university only for the first year. “After that, they concentrate more in building their careers in other spheres.
After the first year, it is also not mandatory for them to come when we call and so not many come,” says Srinivas. He gave a suggestion that in order to improve the quality of the team, there should be a rule where players who have got into colleges through the sports quota come and answer calls by the university sports team for at least two years instead of one.