Cricket Academies Going Good

As cricket continues to grow as sports and craze of people increases craze, the training centers in Kathmandu have started being filled with enthusiastic trainees dreaming of stardom.

The capital city has two training centers – Baluwatar Cricket Club Training Center (BCCTC) and Sangrila Cricket Academy, and together they are training around 250 trainees.

BCCTC was opened in June 2003 by Upendra Prasad Bhattarai, currently the vice-president at Cricket Association of Nepal (CAN) on his own land of nearly four ropanis. “It was more for fulfilling my passion than earning profits,” Bhattarai always said. It employs Arun Aryal, Samsan Thapa and Rikesh Lama as coaches.

The idea came from now-closed Everest Cricket Academy, the first cricket academy. The academy that started well closed down soon mostly due to lack of the land. “We re-located it, but the problem of getting big enough land for center was always there,” Aryal, the senior coach at National Sports Council, remembered.

Now, the center is fully equipped with a dressing room, toilets and four nets – two each for turf and concrete lane and trains 85 people in two shifts. Each tranee has to pay Rs 600 per month after getting registered with Rs. 20 for the facility of using the center, and equipments.

Recently opened Sangrila Cricket Academy is more professional. Former cricketers Aamir Akhtar and Birendra Bikram Shah rented a land of four ropanis at Kupondole with an aim of making a full featured training center. The academy boosts six nets – two turf, three matting and a concrete, hanging ball area and a café.

“We film each trainee every weekend, and analyse their performance,” Akhtar, who had played professional cricket in minor counties in England, said. “Besides, we also have the floodlight for night practice.”

The academy now trains 154 trainees in four shifts and rents the facitilities to schools and corporate houses. National captain Binod Das, Shah himself, Manoj Sudh and Basant Regmi teach at Sangrila. Each trainee pays Rs 1000 a month and Rs 1000 for admission to use the facilities there.

“Private training centers are very important because cricketers do not have to worry about managing nets and all,” former naitonal captain Pawan Agrawal believes. “They are backbone of cricket development.”

When Nepal confirmed its participation in ACC Women’s Cup in July in Malaysia, BCCTC stepped up to train 19 females at the center. With female cricketers in Nepalgunj, who have already played for two years, Bhattarai is planning to have a team from Kathmandu. “We trained 19 females on weekends, and they now can at least play basic cricket,” Bhattarai said.

Akhtar has also proposed to provide the facilities at his academy free of cost for the training of those female cricketers during their closed-camp. With the competition going tough at international levels, the contribution of those training centers in honing the talents prove big contribution for the game, Agrawal believes.