Crowd-puller: That Buchi Babu attracted followers in massive numbers is a truth Gavaskar would attest to.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu Archives
After a five-year hole, one of many oldest cricketing competitions within the nation will kick off throughout 4 venues in Tamil Nadu on Tuesday. The All India Buchi Babu match will characteristic 12 groups this 12 months and, for the primary time, has moved out of Chennai.
The match was first performed in 1909 in reminiscence of Mothavarapu Venkata Mahipathi Naidu, popularly referred to as Buchi Babu Naidu (1868-1908).
Buchi Babu performed a significant position in taking the sport to the plenty in Madras. He then determined to conduct a Madras Presidency match through which the perfect gamers within the metropolis would tackle the Englishmen representing Madras Cricket Club. However, he handed away earlier than the primary version may very well be held. From 1909, the match was named in his honour.
After being performed amongst native golf equipment for the subsequent few many years, it turned an invitational match within the Nineteen Sixties, with the TNCA organising it and groups from outdoors the State taking part within the competitors.
Some of the most important names in Indian cricket was a part of the match, taking part in for his or her employers, just like the State Bank of India, Associated Cement Companies (ACC), Nirlon and Mafatlal to call just a few.
For the subsequent few many years, the match, alongside the Moin-ud-Dowla match in Hyderabad, turned the curtain-raiser for the home season within the nation.
Usually held in August-September, the match was the perfect pre-season warm-up for the gamers when the monsoon was energetic in most elements of the nation.
But the arrival of the TNPL in 2016 meant it was more and more getting troublesome to shoehorn the match into an ever-expanding calendar, and it fell off the grid after the 2017 version.
It has taken Tamil Nadu’s poor report within the Ranji Trophy over the past 5 years to get the match again on the calendar to get its gamers up and prepared for the grind of first-class cricket.
Former India skipper Okay. Srikkanth just lately spoke about how vital and prestigious the match was throughout his adolescence.
“After the 1971 tour to the West Indies, Sunil Gavaskar came to play Buchi Babu that year for ACC against Jolly Rovers at Loyola College. There were 10,000 people to see who Sunil Gavaskar was. I was a seventh-standard boy and watched him play for the first time,” Srikkanth recalled.
“This was an important tournament for cricketers here. Once you do well in the First Division, you get selected for Buchi Babu, and then if you do well there, you get picked for the under-25 or even Ranji Trophy side.
“It was the biggest non-First Class tournament in India,” he added.
Source: www.thehindu.com
