KOCHI: Aiming to take the sport to the next level and produce more international cricketers from the state, the Kerala Cricket Association (KCA) will launch its High-Performance Centre on Saturday at the historic Palace Oval in Tripunithura. With plans in the pipeline to augment the existing infrastructure and turn it into a state-of-theart facility, the centre is modelled on the BCCI-run National Cricket Academy (NCA) in Bengaluru.
Legendary cricketer Ravi Achan, who represented Travancore- Cochin and later Kerala, will unveil the centre at the Tripunithura Cricket Club. The announcement comes as part of KCA celebrations marking the birth centenary of its founder-secretary K V Kelappan Thampuran who started the Pooja all-India cricket tournament in 1951 -- which is arguably the first limited-overs one-day cricket tournament to be held anywhere in the world.
“The Palace Oval is the spiritual home of Kerala cricket where oneday cricket was born in the 1950s,” said KCA secretary Jayesh George. “So, this is the ideal location to set up this facility which will become one of the best cricket infrastructures in the country. KCA had launched Mission 2020 almost a decade ago with a view to building cricket venues in all districts as well as launching academies across the state. We have managed to achieve all our mission objectives and it is time to take the game to the next level.”