Field report: Batting with caution

IT helps to be assured that newspapers will never go out of fashion.

So what if the attestation comes from a 13-year-old pocket-sized hero of the previous day at Mumbai’s eminent Giles Shield schools cricket tournament. Proud of the pen-pic that a daily has carried alongside his name in a 14-point headline, Jaideep Pardesi is still basking in the afterglow of his ၷ10 cm of fame, and readily parts with the 50 rupees promised in treat to his friends.

The youngster looks promising after his knock of 187 and could be only a few centuries away from the big stage and the bigger bucks.

But so could many others, playing at this moment in the maidans across this city and across the country. And father Deepak Pardesi admits it is a very tough call to make, whether to let his son devote these years to cricket or keep that regulation career in engineering on standby. ‘‘One wrong decision by the umpire can halt a career, many cricket dreams have gone sour. The money might just tilt the balance but I insist he studies well,’’ says the father.

There is no indecision for Ashok Semlani, whose son Ronish 11 manages a respectable 80 per cent in class and goes a step higher scoring a fighting hundred on the field. ‘‘If he loves it, and can perform, he has all my backing as long as he wants to play; the money he earns from it later is irrelevant,’’ says Ashok Semlani, the lad’s carpet-merchant father.

But Prateek Gawli’s father doesn’t sell expensive carpets, and Prateek’s last kit-upgradation — better spikes, bigger shoes, longer trousers and a branded bat — pushed up Manoj Gawli’s Diwali spending by Rs 7000.

‘‘Even middle class homes support cricket these days, but to encourage cricket as a full-time career, the money would have to seep down to the hundreds of clubs since that’s where most of them will land up while still on the fringes,’’ Gawli Sr says.

Bhargav Bhatt backs his son Nishad, a team captain at school, because his own father once refused him a pair of new pads as a teenager with some plain-speaking. ‘‘‘What is the probability of you getting into a squad with 7000 jostling for the 11 spots ?’ he used to say, referring to the boy’s chances of making the national team.

But his backing is tempered by some typical Gujarati caution. ‘‘Even now if a Ranji player earns Rs 1 lakh per match, you’d need to be in the best team and play all matches upto the final to earn enough’’.

Despite the math not quite adding up, Bhatt believes that were the cash to enter the second rung of domestic cricket it would help cricketers who seek job satisfaction and a decent standard of living through the game. ‘‘If a club player can get financially independent from his parents after 18, when he really needs the money, then it is worth it. Parents can then truly back the kids,’’ he says.

Pottering around with his bat while his father makes business-sense of cricket Bhatt Junior, though, still fancies getting into that newspaper column, and smiling back at his mug-shot.