GSC’s indoor cricket facility a big boon

“The indoor facility will come in particularly useful during the monsoons when players are forced to idle away for long stretches and lose out on match practice,” said Dr Shyam Agarwal who is the chairman of the GSC.

The GSC already can also bank on the cricketing expertise of famed Test players like Sunil Gavaskar, Ajit Wadekar, Sandeep Patil and Ashok Mankad, who are all life members of the club.

The club’s facilities are divided into five blocks. Block A caters to leisure and relaxation activities. Block B has, among other things, separate health clubs for men and women. The air-conditioned Block C is for games like table tennis,chess, billiards, snooker, carrom, yoga besides housing the sports medicine centre. There are two more air-conditioned halls. The second is for four badminton, basketball, volleyball, archery, netball besides the cricket facility while the third hall is for squash.

The outdoors Block D includes tennis courts, swimming and diving pools, while the expansive Block E has grounds for cricket, football, hockey and an eight-lane 400 m athletics track.

Many former internationals and nationally prominent sportspersons have been roped in by GSC to hone the club’s budding talents in various disciplines. Among them are Merwyn Fernandes (hockey), Ami Ghia (badminton), Pravin Thipsay (chess), Kamlesh Mehta (TT) and Sanjay Sawant (snooker and billiards), Jaya Shetty (kabaddi) and MG Suvarna (football). The coaches will also get the benefit to help improve the skills of the young hopefuls.