In the summertime, when the weather ain’t fine, people across Ahmedabad organise themselves into leagues to play night cricket
Sharda Ugra18-Jun-2019The final bits of the recent profile of Jasprit Bumrah – who he is and where he comes from – required me to travel to Ahmedabad this summer.Gujarat cricket is in its golden age, with a string of first-time national titles. A number of their most successful players in generations – Bumrah, Parthiv Patel, Axar Patel and monster first-class run scorer Priyank Panchal – all regularly have their names in lights in international and domestic cricket.All year round, dozens of young cricketers turn up morning and evening at the Sardar Patel Stadium in central Ahmedabad to train, where Sumer Singh, whose name frequently pops up in conversations about Gujarat’s modern and forward-thinking coaches, runs the M’Power Academy. Established in July 2010, the academy has about 200 boys across two batches. Before every session, the M’Power kids, between five and 20 years of age, take a pledge about playing fair, taking responsibility, respecting each other and enjoying cricket. Youngest to oldest, they introduce themselves to each other, shaking hands. When the session is done, Singh also gets handshakes, instead of the practice traditional in India of students touching the teacher’s feet.Sumer says the general outlook towards cricket in Gujarat has changed considerably over the last few years. “Because lot of players from Gujarat have moved up to play for India. The IPL has [also] made a big impact – it has helped to connect lot of kids to cricket.” The league, he says, has made kids take a global view of the sport. “In our academy, lots of them follow foreign players also.”Gujarat’s most famous national players have been two Patels, offspinner Jasu, who played seven Tests for India in the 1950s, and wicketkeeper Parthiv, who has played 25 Tests so far, the latest in January last year, but the state has never been a traditional hub of the sport churning out quality talent.The IPL has triggered huge interest in the game among children in Ahmedabad, and academies like M’Power are taking advantage•Sharda Ugra/ESPNcricinfo LtdYet, a new variant of the game, running parallel to and sometimes intersecting with the structures of the more formal game, has caught Ahmedabad’s fancy: summertime night cricket.It is played under floodlights in large spaces across the city with leather or tennis balls, often with prize money on offer. Some tournaments feature only recreational players, others a smattering of full-time pros. These tournaments are now played all over the state, I was told, with higher entry fees and bigger prizes. Temperatures may rise over 40°C – in May 2016, Ahmedabad hit 50°C – but the cricket never stops.
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It is a short drive from Ahmedabad airport on the northern arc of the city’s outer ring road to the beautifully manicured and floodlit SGVP Cricket Ground, where the 2019 edition of the Gurukul Premier League (GPL) is on. This “All India Open Night Cricket” tournament lasts 78 days, an exhausting duration for an event on a single ground.”There is no other event like this in India,” claims Bharat Patel, secretary of the SGVP Surya Sports Academy, which organises the tournament. In its publicity material, the GPL calls itself the state’s biggest cricket event, with “200 teams and 3000 players”; even if that count is halved, the GPL still clocks impressive numbers. Originally hostel rector at the SGVP School, Patel now runs the event with a seven-man team. The league offers a total of Rs 4.5 lakhs (about US$6500) in cash prizes; the team winning the elite division gets Rs 2.5 lakhs and the runner-up Rs 1.25 lakhs ($1800).GPL matches tick every box for a professionally run cricket event: players, umpires, scorers, commentators and sponsors. Its leather-ball elite division has 16 teams, the plate division 24, and the tennis-ball event that follows after the leather-ball one contains a melee of 67 teams. SGVP stands for the Shree Swaminarayan Gurukul Vishwavidya Pratishthanam Surya Sports Academy, a religious trust that runs, among other institutions, a school, a hospital, and a charitable organisation promoting the study of Sanskrit and ancient Indian scripture.Night time is the right time: cricket at Aslali•Sharda Ugra/ESPNcricinfo LtdThe GPL began as a four-team intra-school cricket league during the school term of the SGVP International School, in whose campus the ground is situated. The ground and its facilities would remain unused during summer holidays, until a senior administrative staffer at the school decided to invite the city’s cricket-crazy population to come and play. A 24-club team event was held under temporary lights in 2011. By 2014, permanent floodlights had been installed.The GPL is now in its ninth year, with teams from around Gujarat, two from Delhi (Malik Sports and a team from the Comptroller and Auditor General’s office), and one each from Chennai (Jangid CC) and Visakhapatnam (Indian Navy SSC). The plate league even has a team from Nepal. Teams from out of town are accommodated in the school’s hostel. Former India seamer Sudeep Tyagi and Kerala batsman Sachin Baby played in this year’s event, as did Gujarat’s record-breaking opener Samit Gohel . Jaydev Unadkat, Siddharth Trivedi and Bumrah have also played in the tournament before.Thirty kilometres south, far removed from the grand domes and sweeping staircases of the Gurukul, by the side of National Highway 64, a match is in progress at the public ground in Aslali. Motorcycles and scooters parked are around the venue, and friends and families of players sit around, cheering the game. The rented floodlights are working well, and fluorescent lights illuminate the 30-yard circle. Large container trucks hurtle by on the highway while the Aslali Youth Night Cricket tournament (“super knockout”, 12 overs-a-side tennis ball matches) takes place next to it.Three matches are played every evening in the two-month long tournament, which is open to any team that can pay the Rs 4500 (about $65) entry fee. The winner gets Rs 35,000. The tournament is organised by a local youth group called the Aslali Yuvak Mandal, who say they turned this ground from a patch of scrub and rubble into a cricket ground about seven years ago before the civic body took notice.Bharat Patel, chief organiser of the GPL, says the tournament attracts 200 teams and 3000 players over the course of its 78 days•Sharda Ugra/ESPNcricinfo LtdHere too, there is a commentator and a scorer, sitting on a platform made of bamboo poles and straw mats, calling a match between Bapji XI and Ya Ali Madad XI on the evening I visit. There’s a cold drinks and ice cream stall, and another vendor on hand to churn out omelettes if you’re feeling peckish.I get talking to Nirav Patel, who is a regular spectator here. He reckons that teams turn up from a catchment radius of 40km around Ahmedabad and the town of Anand. While everyone in Aslali knows that there are tournaments that are bigger and richer than theirs (“Khambat’s entry fee itself is Rs 50,000,” says Nirav), there is a quiet pride in what Aslali offers. “People come here to relax, meet friends, have fun, let off some steam. It’s all ages, all backgrounds, from students to 30-year-olds.” On finals day, Nirav says, more than 300 could turn up. (“Check it out on YouTube.”)Even large wedding venues in Ahmedabad host cricket matches. These grounds, “party plots”, are leased out to teams when it’s off-season for the wedding market. It is here that community-based leagues as well as profession-based ones – premier leagues for doctors, lawyers and chartered accountants – hold their games.Former Gujarat Under-23 batsman Meet Shah, who runs a popular scoring and networking app called Cricheroes, catering to all these recreational players, takes me to one such party plot where a Lohana (an affluent merchant community in Gujarat) league pre-practice match is going on. An impressive set of sedans is parked outside, and players mill about spaces marked “For the bride” and “For the groom”, using them as change rooms.In a city where the entrepreneurial is everyday, it’s not surprising that people have managed to conjure up entertainment (and big business) even in the most punishing season of the year.