Cricket Fellowship Booth connects Rotarians K R Parthasarathy
From L: Rtn KR Parthasarathy, RI Director AS Venkatesh, PDG S Krishnaswami, Vinita Venkatesh, Shobhana and DGE Ravi Raman. I t is with pleasure I would like to share with you the wonderful times we had at the Rotary International Convention in Houston, USA, from Jun 4–8, 2022. My joy knew no bounds when my application as district chair, Rotary Friendship Exchange, and convener of a world RFE group, for organising a breakout session, and another one for manning a fellowship booth for the International Fellowship of Cricket Loving Rotarians (IFCR), were shortlisted by the RI Convention Committee. The breakout session I had organised on ‘Connect through recreational fellowship and Rotary friendship exchange’ opened to a full-house. Debbie Roopchand, secretary of IFCR from West Indies, spoke on Rotary cricket fellowship. She is the DGN of RI EJTUSJDU%(*OHSJE4UFJOIPġ RID 2202, Barcelona, Spain, and past president Isabel Rodriquez, from Peru, RID 4465, spoke on Rotary friendship exchange. We had a Cricket Fellowship Booth at the House of Friendship and it was manned by RID 3232 DGN Ravi Raman, his wife Shobhana, and Rtn Neel, also from the same district. Rotarian friends from Puducherry, Hyderabad and other Indian cities visited our booth to discuss and recall the various memorable Plus_P_Cricket Fellowship Booth_Health camp in Agra.indd 4 16-09-2022 17:23:55 SEPTEMBER 2022 Rotary News Plus 5 games played in the past and how we would enjoy every moment of the game irrespective of the country that was playing. IFCR members Sajid Bhatti (Pakistan), PDG Isthiaque (Bangladesh) and PDG Rajan (Sri Lanka) and RIDs Mohammad Faiz and A S Venkatesh visited the booth. PRIP Shekhar Mehta played a couple of deliveries and that created a lot of buzz around. The Cricket Fellowship Booth was a buzz of activity on BMMÜWFEBZTPGUIFDPOWFOUJPO and it was heartening to note that a lot of interest was shown by the visitors from the US, Canada and various parts of West Indies. We were thrilled to see the interest shown by a group of Interactors from the US. The writer is past president of RC Secunderabad, RID 3150 From L: PDGs Krishnaswami (3232), Krish Rajendran and Bhashkumar Rajan (both from 3220, Sri Lanka)
Fellowship was the great winner at the Durban 2010 World Festival from Sunday March 7 to Friday March 12. Over 300 attendees either enjoyed the week's activities to renew friendships with colleagues not seen for two years or more or, for first time attenders, took the opportunity to sample the rewards to be had in our International Fellowship of Cricketing Rotarians,
Clive Hull (RSA Team Captain) with the flag at the opening ceremony. Mike Jackson is in the background.
Fourteen teams participated - seven from India, two from Australia, one each from Great Britain and Ireland, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Pakistan with one composite team which went under the name of the International Wanderers.
The expansion of IFCR in India recently saw Mumbai represented for the first time with two teams, the Mumbai Masters and the Mumbai Blasters, and Kolkata represented by one team which called itself the Eastern Eagles.
Having all festival players and accompanying persons at the comfortable Blue Waters Hotel simplified arrangements and made for excellent camaraderie.
Four days of cricket for the fourteen teams were supplemented by an optional game on the other day. Thirty over games took place on three of the main days while Wednesday saw an innovative 3-way game played. This game consisted of Team A batting for 24 overs against Team B, Team B batting for 24 overs against Team C and Team C batting for 24 overs against Team A.
Ten grounds were used during the week. In all cases, good standard wickets were provided with excellent luncheon, water and after-match facilities.
Away from the field evening arrangements were appreciated by all. The Grand Opening Dinner at the Elangeni Hotel featured our regular flag ceremony, some light-hearted live entertainment and an interesting address by Errol Stewart, former RSA international cricketer and former ICC employee. A wine tasting at the headquarters hotel was a first-time event for an IFCR festival.
Home hospitality was the time for the visitors to spend an evening one-on-one with a local host family. It was appreciated greatly by all participants. The final dinner at the delightful Hellenic Community Centre was highlighted by an address by Pat Symcox (20 Test matches).
The two Rotarians who made it all happen - Gerald Sieberhagen and Gordon Dowsett.
The Annual General Meeting of IFCR was held on Thursday. March 11. Michael Jackson and Phil Stevenson did not seek re-election as Chairman and Secretary respectively. David Horsley (Australia) and Graeme Amoore (Australia) were elected to these two offices. Following Gerald Anderson's decision to stand down as treasurer it was agreed to discontinue that office as IFCR now has no separate funds. The next IFCR World Festival will be held at Vapi in Gujarat state of India in February, 2012. The Rotary Club of Vapi is the home club of the incoming RI president 2011-12 Kalyan Banerjee.
The festival would not have happened had it not been for the sterling work done by the chief organizer, Gerald Sieberhagen. Other members who deserve credit for assisting in the organization were Hilary Augustus (specially in the House of Friendship), Gordon Dowsett, Garnet Carr and Clive Hull.
Cricket and Rotary by Richard Groom
Polio sufferer and Test cricketer Bhagwat Chandrasekhar was invited to Australia in early 2012 to be a special guest at the third test match between India & Australia at Perth to mark the completion of one year since the last case of polio in India.
Chandra is 66 now, virtually housebound after being hit by a truck in Bangalore, and confined to short walks aided by crutches lest the leg ulcer that won't heal opens again. Yet, for what he represents, Bhagwat Chandrasekhar is a force as powerful as any India sent out last summer.
Chandra was a special guest at the third Test in Perth in January, where celebrations were held to mark the one-year anniversary of the last case of polio reported in India.
Young Australians today enjoy a blissful ignorance of a virus that haunted their ancestors through the middle of the last century; India's immunization and eradication path has been painfully longer.
In 1950, a small boy in the southern city of Mysore felt feverish and was taken to hospital, where the nurses smiled and gave him chocolate. When the English doctor did his rounds he would wave hello, until one morning he could no longer lift his arm.
Chandra recalls being in hospital ''quite a long time'', then hours spent sitting in the sun, rubbing his hand with cod liver oil, which he drank morning and night. As he grew, he played table tennis and badminton left-handed. His right wrist, shoulder and arm never fully developed, yet through 58 Test matches over 15 years he turned polio's legacy into one of the most unpredictable and unique weapons the game has seen.
He was as much a part of the 1977-78 Australian summer as the hosts' reconditioned captain, a 41-year-old Bob Simpson, and the various Toohey’s, Ogilvie’s and Gannon’s who strove to prove that the loss of Chappell, Lillee, Marsh and friends to World Series Cricket would not ruin the Test team after all.
Bouncing in off his medium-pacer's run-up, and bowling at similar pace, Chandra took 28 wickets at 25 for the series, highlighted by 6-52 in each innings at the MCG that inspired India's maiden Test win in Australia. He thinks he bowled better against Simmo first time around (at home in 1964), and in Bombay to take 11 of 14 West Indies’ wickets from 93 overs.
Profiles of Chandra hail his place among the quartet of Indian masters, alongside Bedi, Prasanna and Venkat. It is sometimes claimed that he had as little idea what the ball would do after it left his hand as the batsman. He laughs at the rubbish talked - that he could turn his wrist beyond 180 degrees and that his hand was devoid of bone.
''The only thing I had was a polio arm, which is weak even now,'' Chandra says. ''But I utilized it somehow. People thought I just let the ball [go] from my hand and the ball was doing the rest. That is ridiculous, I knew what I was bowling.''
His opponents often didn't. It might have been one of his two ''faster ones'' delivered with different actions - one straight, the other an off-spinner - or the flipper or googly. It mattered little that his stock ball, the leg-break, hardly turned at all.
Nothing about this amazing man should surprise, but anyone who remembers his blink-and-miss-it batting that summer might struggle with the notion that, as well as having kept wicket and bowled fast as a junior, he was an opening bat. Chandra still has the bat with the hole in it that Gray-Nicolls gave him to commemorate his four ducks for the series, including a king pair in Melbourne.
He made a first-baller on debut against England in '64 too, but points out that he and Bapu Nadkarni shared a record 10th-wicket stand of 51 in his next Test. ''Somehow, I lost the concentration of batting,'' he says, as 23 ducks and just 167 runs alongside his 252 wickets attest.
Memories of him smiling away and enfolding teammates in those thin arms, shirt sleeves buttoned to the wrists, always ensured he was a popular visitor. He knows the significance of a polio-free year in his country of 1.2 billion; at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Global Poverty Project and sundry aid agencies committed to eradicating this crippling disease, there is optimism that those two precious immunization drops have had the ultimate victory.
Kerry Packer, the Waugh twins' grandmother and Don Bradman's son all suffered polio, but Chandra is cricket's enduring link. He is indomitable; after playing a club season in Adelaide in 1991, he was set to return for a professional summer in Melbourne when a truck with brake failure ran him down. He didn't get out of bed for more than three years. Travelling was not easy, but life is for living. ''Oh gosh, I had to go to Adelaide while I'm in Australia” he said. ''That's my favorite place”.
Editor’s Note – I had the honor and privilege of hosting Chandra on a private tour of the MCG shortly before he returned to India.
Richard Groom