The clock strikes eight in the morning and the splendid Rajabhai Tower booms over Oval Maidan. Another summer morning; another day of cricket has dawned. Nets have been erected at various spots of the 22-acre expanse. Organised coaching camps are being conducted on proper pitches. Aspiring, enthusiastic cricketers have occupied the scuffed-up periphery for casual batting sessions, where the maidan fence serves as the stump. Spikes, cricket boots, slippers, bare feet; everything and everyone are welcome. At one end, two boys are knocking about. One, who possibly lost the toss and was forced to bowl, tosses the ball. The other steps in, strikes it with a straight bat; head down, elbow straight. You can picture him in a coaching manual.
Even though the sport is currently in the grips of IPL and its penchant for the outrageous, Mumbai’s school of batting shines on in the dustiest and the most anonymous of corners.It is where many celebrated cricketers started their journey: at these throbbing maidans. Where the pitches are uncovered and the boundaries unmarked; where battlefields crisscross and cricket blooms amidst confusion.
Six pitches are spread over 22 acres of Oval Maidan. Across the road lies the triangular Azad Maidan, where a mind-boggling 22 pitches crowd 25 acres. At the nearby Cross Maidan, 5.5 acres are occupied by nine pitches. Shivaji Park, which lies in the heart of Mumbai, has eight pitches on 27 acres. Somehow, players learn to keep a track of how far the boundary is and who their fielders are. Its cricket’s Maximum City.
“Focus and tenacity,” says Jatin Paranjpe, former Mumbai and India player, is what the city’s madness teaches you. “There are no sight-screens. At any given point, there are two, three matches going around you. You just have to learn to concentrate.”Mumbai has given the country a long, illustrious list of cricketers, most of them batsmen: Vijay Merchant, Vijay Manjrekar, Polly Umrigar, Ajit Wadekar, Sunil Gavaskar, Dilip Vengsarkar, Sachin Tendulkar. With 41 titles, Mumbai is the most successful Ranji Trophy team. They won 15 in a row, from 1958-59 to 1972-73, and claimed 20 out of 22 between 1955-56 and 1976-77. During India’s 1971 England tour — India’s first series win in England — six of the 11 players were from Mumbai.
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History and hope burgeons at Mumbai’s maidans. At a well-manicured end of Azad Maidan sits the upscale Bombay Gymkhana. That’s the ground that hosted the first-ever Test in India, against England in 1933.However, Mumbai’s most famous maidan story is the 664-run stand between Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli. Tendulkar, almost 15, scored 326 not out while the 16-year-old Kambli made 349 not out in February 1988, for Shardarshram Vidyamandir while playing against St Xavier’s High School at Sassanian ground at Azad Maidan.
In 2013, the same year that Tendulkar retired from the game, Mumbai discovered its latest wonderboy. Prithvi Shaw, 14 years at the time, scored 546 while playing for Rizvi Springfield against St Francis D’Assisi in a Harris Shield match, also at Azad Maidan.Mumbai’s success is rooted in these maidans, and the multitude of tournaments and matches that take place on them. The city’s cricket calendar runs for almost 10 months, taking only a short breather during summer.
In Rajdeep Sardesai’s book Democracy’s XI, Gavaskar says: “I don’t remember a single weekend when I was growing up when I wasn’t playing a match. We played on all kinds of wickets, rain or shine. That experience is priceless.” The players, right up to Tendulkar’s days, would hop on from one maidan to another, playing a number of matches in a day.
“What a lot of people also don’t know is that most of Mumbai’s cricketers started with tennis-ball cricket,” says former player Vilas Godbole, 77. “When we used to play, there were no helmets or protective gear. Tennis balls are much lighter than season (leather) ball, so we didn’t really fear getting hit by the ball. The foundation was very strong. That’s why Mumbai’s batsmen of the earlier era, like Vijay Manjrekar or Polly Umrigar, were so adept at playing horizontal-batted shots like pull, cut and hook.”
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But the tournament that has shaped Mumbai’s batsmen the most is Kanga League. The monsoon tournament was started in 1948, mainly because the wet, uncovered wickets were seen as the best preparation for conditions in England.“When you play in Kanga League, you quickly realise that you can’t get far without defence,” adds Paranjpe. The wet, green, uncovered wickets in Kanga League, which usually kicks off in July, are fiendish. The ball zips and swings. The monsoon-fuelled grass is a few feet high in the outfield and the ball really doesn’t go anywhere.
“A team score of 70 is considered good in Kanga League,” says Godbole, who played for United Cricket Club, based at Cross Maidan, in his prime. “It is not unusual to see four innings in a day.”
Jatin, son of noted coach Vasu Paranjpe, has a story to tell about his initiation into the league.
“I was 12 or 13 at the time,” says Jatin, who is 47 now. “I used to be a scorer for Dadar Union (where his father used to play). One day, the regular opener didn’t turn up.
So I was drafted in at the last minute and was made to open the innings with Sunil Gavaskar. We had a partnership of 40, after batting for an hour-and-a-half. Gavaskar scored 39 of those and I scored one. It was the best batting lesson! Tournaments like Kanga League teach you how to survive and the importance of earning every run.”This battle for survival became Mumbai’s brand identity. Colloquially termed as khadoos, it stood for the immense pride that Mumbai batsmen took in staying at the crease. A straight bat and large reserves of concentration became their armour.
“The dull dogs of cricket, that is how the cynics had labelled Bombay (now Mumbai) during the early days of Ranji Trophy,” former Mumbai captain Madhav Apte, 86, who played Kanga League till the age of 70, wrote in a column a couple of years ago. “It would later be called the khadoos Mumbai attitude. Whatever the cost, never accept defeat. Many a great batsmen and bowlers from the various champion sides this city has produced, lived by this motto. The club culture is still strong in the maidans of this great city and is churning out talented youngsters, who seem driven and committed.”
Mumbai’s cricket season, majority of which is played on the maidans, runs from late July to April and prepares the players for almost every scenario. “Kanga League is very difficult for the batsman, especially the drying wicket. The pitch is very unpredictable then because it has some dry spots that can turn. So you have to be very attentive. Once Kanga League is over, the period between October and December is the best for batsmen. From about mid-January, wickets start getting very dry and begin turning. That is another challenge for batsmen; how to tackle spinners. So in a year’s time, batsmen from Mumbai play on almost every type of wicket and learn to adapt,” says Godbole.
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Players like Godbole and Paranjpe learned from the best. One of the many charms of maidan cricket was that even the Mumbai stars playing for India would regularly turn up for their clubs. Rivalries were fierce; about four to five thousand fans would turn up to watch a match between Shivaji Park Gymkhana and Dadar Union. The 76-year-old narrates tales of how players like Umrigar, when he wasn’t competing, would drive around the maidans all day and catch up on the important action.“My dad used to get a call from Sunil Gavaskar once he was back from internationals,” recalls Jatin. “He used to tell him to write his name down for a club match happening the next day. Gavaskar would say, maybe I’ll be half an hour late for the warm-up but I’ll definitely come.”
“No one watches maidan cricket anymore. The big stars don’t bother turning up,” laments Godbole. For a generation used to the big hits of T20 cricket, cricket at the maidans is like watching paint dry.
“The players who have made it big don’t rate going back to maidan cricket as apt match practice,” says Jatin. “But recently I was at Cross Maidan for an event. There were four of five bowlers who were clearly not from Mumbai. I asked them where they were from.
They said they were from Azamgarh (in Uttar Pradesh). That’s when I realised that just like people from across India come to Bollywood, now they are coming here to play for Mumbai Indians. That journey starts from these maidans. It’s the school of hard knocks.”The stars may have shunned them, but these maidans remain the biggest playground for the anonymous hopeful.
big banga in kanga
Known for its hostile conditions, Kanga League has been witness to quite a few bowling feats. In 1996, an 18-year-old Zaheer Khan sent down 10 consecutive maiden overs. Pardeep Sahu, who turned out for Kings XI Punjab last year, became in 2016 the fourth bowler to take ten wickets in an innings. Aditya Tare, though, made a name for himself as a batsman, scoring the league’s only double ton, in 2013.
revival of oval
It was only at the turn of the millennium that Oval Maidan started becoming what it is today. Until the late 20th century, the ground — owned and maintained by the state government — was ill-kempt, and a hotbed for beggars, prostitutes and drug-peddlers. In 1997, the Oval-Cooperage Residents Association was formed, and it took the legal route to claim ownership of the ground to better it.