Achrekar 'Sir': Champion maker at dusk

Cricketnext.com

(This was the first of a special series on Cricketnext.com on Indian coaches)

A sea of fielders, wisps of dust showing up and countless number of cricket pitches cutting across the ground — the evenings at Mumbai's Shivaji Park haven't changed one bit. Captains fail to track their players but ask them about Ramakant Achrekar's cricket academy and they will guide you through the patchwork.

Age and declining faculties haven't held him back from his more-than-40-years of engagement with Shivaji Park. Sporting his tweed cap and supporting himself on a wooden chair, he stutters in Marathi while gesturing at one of the players, "Cup your hands close to the chest to take a high catch." He is eager to demonstrate more but stops at that. The thoughts, the words are not as coherent after he suffered a fatal paralytic attack in 1995.

Achrekar, honoured with the Dronacharya Award in 1990, still needs to draw sustenance from the red soil and watch his boys go through the paces. Every day. Just like in his heydays when he never allowed his pupils to miss a single net session, towing them on his scooter to the ground.

Cricket lore is full of wonderful stories about how he would take Sachin Tendulkar to another game if he failed in one match, making him represent more than 10 teams, and how he never bothered to alter the little master's exaggerated bottom-hand grip.

As coach, he strove as much for the careers of Lalachand Rajput, Suresh Shastri, Ramnath Parkar, Balwinder Singh Sandhu, Padam Shastri and Chandrakant Pandit as he did for Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli.

Some of his boys may not have scaled Tendulkar's heights but the anecdotes they have to share are nothing short of chilling.

"He watched me at a tennis-ball game at Chembur and instructed one of his boys to ask me to join his nets," recounts Chandrakant Pandit.

Achrekar was keen that Pandit switch from Robert Money High School to Shardashram Vidyamandir (where he was the coach) so that his cricket could flourish under his watch. Pandit's father however wouldn't relent.

"I remember the day he dropped in at my place," Pandit recalls. "It was past mid-night. Achrekar Sir was determined to convince my father who just wouldn't budge."

"So you want Chandrakant to have a good career and support the family," Achrekar quivered. "Let's strike a deal then. I take your son in exchange of a monthly salary of Rs 1000, what he would earn elsewhere." This was in 1976.

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Pandit says, "My father was swept by a wide range of emotions. He hadn't come across such a person in the past. He didn't know how to react. Obviously he gave in."

Two years later Pandit would score 301 runs in a Harris Shield game (Shardashram v King George). Pandit lost his wicket to the last ball of the day but was doubly pleased with his effort.

In the dressing room he got a hefty dose of hugs and pats except from Achrekar who stood there, livid.

"All of a sudden he made me red with a deafening slap," Pandit says. "Sir didn't let me forget it. He told me, 'you cannot throw your wicket like that at any level of cricket. That was a loose shot. You could have carried on and got another hundred tomorrow.'"

Kambli remembers how his Achrekar Sir gave him an earful when he started flying a kite in the middle of a school match. "Sir would never admit of nonsense on the field. At the nets, practice, practice and more practice was his way," Kambli says.

At the end of it he loved his pupils so much that he would take complete charge of their lives. "But he always had an aura about him that kept all of us on guard," Praveen Amre says.

Probably it was this aura that caused one of the greatest tragedies in Indian cricket.

"It was a school match at Mumbai's PJ Hindu Gymkhana," recalls Achrekar's daughter, Kalpana Morkar, who has kept up the good work at the academy.

"He was having lunch during the innings break. Some of them noticed that food was dripping from his mouth. Nobody could gather the courage to rush towards him. He was hospitalised only in the evening but had they reacted swiftly the damage wouldn't have been as severe."

He hasn't been the irate Achrekar ever since. Only a miracle can restore a dead nerve on his right brain. How much it has hurt Indian cricket can be gauged from the fact that Ajit Agarkar is the last cricketer from Shardashram Vidyamandir School to represent the country. Perhaps Achrekar is the last of the rare breed that transform sportsmen with the inner touch.