NEW DELHI, February 21: Sunday evening turned out to be a memorable one for the 20-odd young cricketers of National Stadium when they received special awards for their outstanding performances on the recent successful tour of Bhopal. Former India left-arm spinner Maninder Singh, himself a product of the Stadium, gave away prizes to the youngsters in the Under-12 and Under-14 age categories in recognition of their performances, on and off the field during the tour.Maninder later exhorted the youngsters to keep up the tradition of the National Stadium which has produced almost a dozen India players in the last two decades. He told the boys, ``Work hard, results will come.''Special prizes were awarded to the following players: Surya Azad (best all-rounder in u-14), Gaurav Nanda (best batsman), Arjun Mahajan (best fielder and most disciplined player), Sandeep Karki (u-12, batsman). Vikram Mahajan received man of the series prize in u-14 category while Soumya Azad (u-12, best batsman), Mayank Kapila (best bowler), Dhruv Davar (best fielder), Bobby Sham (best fielder throughout the tour) and Ratan rawat (best wicketkeeper) received prizes.Nakul Chopra, the u-12 skipper, got the man of the series award. The 24-member team went to Bhopal with coach Ramesh Chopra and won all its matches and the team's fielding was highly appreciated.Among prominent Stadium products who attended the function today included Surinder Khanna, Gursharan Singh and Vivek Razdan, besides coaches `Dronacharya' Gurcharan Singh, Virender Bhatnagar and officials of SAI and parents of the young cricketers.It was proposed to conduct a tournament of two-days duration among the various stadia under the SAI in the near future.
