At 21, the Somasundaram ground bred YSCA Guru Product left for Bombay despite being in the TN Ranji reserves and took them by storm with two big hundreds in U22 tourney
'Just Cheena' came back to Madras, marketed himself with S Sriraman and scored a big hundred in his comeback match after injury
In his 2nd innings, he has created a great platform for his two daughters having dedicated his life to them as a single parent while at the same time becoming a successful real estate player
Less than an hour to the start of a TNPL match exactly same time last year, this writer received a surprise message that Vimal Khumar, son of my YMCA TSR and league teammate from the 1980s TN Ramachandran, was in the playing XI that evening’s game for the first time that season. The message came to me from former Bombay and TN Ranji cricketer S Srinivasan. And how? The former SVPB cricketer marketed for the southpaw to be included in the playing XI with the management (S Badrinath) of Dindigul Dragons!!! Srinivasan called it the Bombay way of marketing a young talent. Interestingly it was not the first time he marketed a cricketer for he promoted his own self with none other than the legendary S Sriraman in 1983 when he was in his 20s!!! And similar to Vimal, Srinivasan too got picked for the TN Ranji side soon after his marketing exercise and he responded with a big century. He was also the one who as youngster in his early 20s took a big call in the 1970s to move to Bombay to give his cricket career a fillip though he had spent this entire formative years playing cricket at the Somasundaram ground in T Nagar and later for TN schools and the Madras University. Here’s the story.
Another YSCA Gurumurthy team product, Srinivasan spent his entire childhood at the Somasundaram Ground playing alongside the likes of TA Sekar (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2013/08/ta-sekar-architect-behind-worlds-best.html) and leggie S Madhavan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2018/11/rbi-madhavan-leg-spinner.html). Even as a tennis ball player, he developed the big innings temperament and the penchant for big hundreds. Like most in that group, he began his league cricket for Guru’s team in the lower division and then moved up the ladder. Very early on his life, he had made up his mind that cricket was going to be his way of life for a long time “My appa was a self-made man and he wanted me to be one. He did not force academics on to me and gave me the freedom to take to cricket as a way of life. Cricket was my strength and I pursued that” he told this writer at the 3rd floor flat in RA Puram that is testimony to his creative abilities in the real estate space with sunlight beaming into his house all times in the day.
It was his big performances for RKM that earned him a place in the city schools team and then in the state schools under Bharath Reddy.
Cricket Politics but appa’s lifetime ‘Destiny’ message
It was then that he had the taste of cricket politics. He recounts his first sad moments in cricket “I scored 167 for TN schools but did not find a place in the South Zone XI replaced by the ‘Kerala Cricketing Clout’. I had performed exceptionally under Bharath Reddy and a good performance for SZ would have taken me to England with the Indian Schools team. It was not to be. It left me wondering for the first time in life as to what more I had to do to gain selection.”
"When my appa saw me sitting in a corner disappointed at the non selection, he gave me a message that has stood with through all the highs and lows in life and given me the strength to face life. Its all destiny he told me and accept everything in life as it comes."
Former TN middle order batsman PC Prakash(https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2022/04/pc-prakash-tn-ranji-1980s.html), who played under Srinivasan for Vivekananda College, endorses this attitude of Srinivasan "We have had some great conversations about cricket. He has never been bitter about the past despite not fulfilling his batting potential at the Ranji level. He has accepted what life has given him."
"Though I missed out on the UK tour, Bharath Reddy was kind enough to get me a Gray Nicolls bat with which I scored a lot of runs" Srinivasan recalls of the gesture from his Schools captain.
The College Years - Prolific run getter
He played four years for Vivekananda College and captained them to three trophies in a year. Former IOB opener Rocko M Sundar remembers Srinivasan from the Vivekananda college days“My earliest memory of Srinivasan is that of a 16 year old lad who joined Vivekananda College as a cricketer having represented TN State Schools. I distinctly remember his first innings for the college. He scored 24 runs and all of them were boundaries, authoritative square cuts in the mould of G.R. Viswanath. He was a dashing stroke maker then and only subsequently changed his approach & curbed his stroke play.”
Great Learner
Sundar was part of the Viveka College gang that met regularly at the Nageswara Rao Park in Mylapore and recounts Srinivasan's learning abilities "Srinivasan would join us at the Nageswara Rao Park where we assembled every evening after the college. Often he sought advice from senior cricketers like P. K. Dharmalingam (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2015/06/pk-dharmalingam.html), V Krishnaswamy (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2016/08/krishnaswamy-v.html), Shivu & others. He was a keen learner, who put the knowledge gained to good use, which saw him scale to the Ranji level after his college days".
Prakash too recalls the favourite square off the wicket shots of Srinivasan "His ‘down on one knee square drive’ was a treat to watch. On the back of big success in schools cricket, he was a bit brash and over confident at that time. He had a hunger for runs and all of us looked up to him as a hero at college. He was stylish and technically very sound and a prolific run getter for the college and at the University level.”
The transformational Colts Tour
The tour to Bombay with the TN Colts was an eye opener for Srinivasan. While he struggled to graduate from the schools and university performances into first division scores on matting wickets, he struck gold on the turf wickets in Bombay against the best of bowlers and topped the aggregate impressing Annadurai, the manager on that tour.
'Just' when he was set to play for TN, he took an unprecedented call to move to Bombay to pursue his cricketing dreams “Following my success during the Collegiate years and the form I showed in Bombay on the colts tour, I was confident that I had it in me to reach the top batting on the turf wickets."
Srinivasan says that by then Delhi opener Venkat Sundaram had already invited him to the capital suggesting that big runs for Delhi would fast track his growth with the presence of Bedi there but he had to reject that offer for he had no support plans in Delhi in terms of job and accommodation. His appa was working in Bombay and that made it easier for him to take the Bombay call as contrasted with the opportunity in Delhi.
Destiny plays out again - positively this time
In the inter university final in Mysore, he had scored a double hundred that helped him get into the TN Ranji reserves. But here he was taking the call to let go TN and moving to an ‘unknown’ state to further his cricket career. “At that time, I dreamt big. It was a huge step for me but I believed that big runs in Bombay would offer a faster growth path in cricket.”
Takes Bombay by storm
The Bombaiites had been impressed with his Colts performances and his appa spoke to SBI’s India star Ajit Wadekar and Sharad Diwakar on the prospects for his son. The latter asked him to talk to Sunil Gavaskar. “It was co-incidental that ACC was looking for players and Gavaskar asked me to come to Bombay. I boarded the Bombay mail with one ‘Petty’ and went for the interview. I received my appointment letter as a clerk at a monthly salary of Rs. 350. The mandate was clear – to make big runs for ACC in every match.”
He was playing alongside Gavaskar for ACC!!! “Gavaskar taught me the importance of back lift and its variations on fast and slow pitches. Big hundreds was his message to me.”
Srinivasan and appa Sankaran with Legend Gavaskar
National Camp along with Kapil and Kirti Azad
He was also picked in the month long residential national camp at CCI conducted by Colonel Hemu Adikari alongside Kapil Dev, Kirti Azad, Shivlal Yadav Yograj Singh, Arshad Ayub and Gopal Sharma, all of who went on to play for India. A few months after the camp, Kapil went on the tour to Pakistan “The hidden dream right then was to play for the country.”
No Parochial Bias- Legend Manjrekar stands by him
The very next season, he was in the Bombay Ranji team alongside Ashok and Rahul Mankad, Eknath Solkar, Padmakar Shivalkar and Ghulam Parkar. Asked if there was the ‘outsider feeling’ in the team, he recalls the strong message from legendary Vijay Manjrekar “There had been questions about my selection leading to the Ranji season in 1978. They had already picked me for Bombay U22 and the selectors used that logic to silence the ‘political’ critics. Legend Vijay Manjrekar had a big heart and no parochial bias. Those with talent and performances found a place in his team. It was a great feeling to be in the Bombay dressing room at 22 and to bat at No. 4 in that line up.”
Ranji Debut for Bombay
Srinivasan scored 21 in his only Ranji Trophy innings for Bombay in the season opener in November 1978. He knew that the big stars were coming back for the second match and his career in Bombay depended on that one innings against Baroda “Had I converted that start to a big hundred my cricketing life would have been different. Once again, as my appa has said all his life, it was all destiny.”
Unfortunately, with Gavaskar and Vengsarkar back from the Pakistan tour and available for the rest of the season, Srinivasan never got another chance to play and decided to return to Madras the next summer.
1979 - Back with a Bang in Madras
Srinivasan exploded in the first division league on the back of the confidence from his stint in Bombay. He began with a double century against RBI and was in rampant form in the league that led to his immediate selection in the TN Ranji team. After a short unbeaten knock innings in the season opener, he came up against a top notch Karnataka side. He knew a big innings against Chandra, Vijayakrishna and Bhat would have stabilized his presence in the TN Batting lineup. He had been struck with Madras Eye that week but was ready to bat. 'Just' when he was beginning to stroke the ball well, Chandra cleaned him up.
Chandra shatters his early TN dream
K Balaji (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/09/a-blossoming-cricket-career-was-cut.html) was in prime form in the 1970s before giving up serious cricket at 24. He went in to bat after Srinivasan’s dismissal in the Ranji match in Bangalore against Karnataka, one that this writer listened to every ball without a break on the radio (Kannada Commentary-https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2007/04/domesticindia-cricket-matches-1979-1983.html) and recalls the ripper from Chandra that ended Srinivasan’s 1979 season “The ball pitched outside leg and took the top of the off stump. It was an unplayable delivery.”
Srinivasan and Balaji had earlier played together for the Madras University. Balaji remembers Srinivasan as a sincere and conscientious cricketer. “He took to his batting very seriously, was earnest in his approach and showed great application. His sincerity in approach was reinforced with the success he had in Bombay. It was a great achievement for a cricketer from Madras to take the step to go to Bombay at that young age and be accepted there at the top level. One had to have self-confidence and great belief in oneself to go to Bombay and compete with the best. He had that in great abundance in the 1970s.”
Ranji Trophy winning captain and team mate for over a decade at SPIC, S Vasudevan echoes Balaji's sentiment"He was one of the most sincere cricketers of the time. Cheena was a solid middle order batsman and a very good fielder both close in and in the outfield."
Srinivasan says that the ball from Chandra shattered his confidence and it took time for him to recover “I was batting well with TE and playing Chandra confidently treating him like a medium pacer when he foxed me with that beauty. The ball just removed the off bail. It shattered me completely. Kirmani consoled me saying that it would have got the best in the world. You got very limited opportunities in those days and one had to make full use of them. I was destined to get that unplayable ball from Chandra that sent me packing for the rest of the season."
Srinivasan was dropped after failing to convert the two starts in this match and did not play again that season. He did get a couple of chances the next year including in the Quarter Final against Haryana but failed to capitalise on the opportunities.
All Style - Dress, Pads and his English
SVPB’s Soundararajan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2018/06/svpb-udumalpet-soundararajan.html?m=1) was looking to build a strong club from Udumalpet and Srinivasan joined Peter Fernandez and NP Madhavan in the 1980s to present a formidable batting order for the districts club.
SVPB opener for a couple of decades, S Sukumar, was one of the earliest to arrive in Udumalpet. He had joined them from Salem. He offers a different perspective of Srinivasan from the four years that he saw him closely at the club. "Having coming from Bombay, he had learned the art of playing in the 'V'. He also brought an 'outsider's' style into Coimbatore cricket. He was always stylishly dressed. Even his pads stood out from the rest and wore stylish ones. His English stood out among the team members. His constant use of 'Just' ended up in him being named as 'Just' Cheena."
A Knee Surgery and Dr. Zaman's Inspiration
He was injured while playing for SVPB at the American College in Madurai and underwent a knee surgery in 1981 that kept him out of cricket for a while. He credits Dr. Zaman for his recovery and his entry back into the TN Ranji team “Dr Zaman from Australia (his daughter Peggy Zaman played tennis and was sportswoman of the year in the late 1980s) recommended me to Sundararajan who was into sports medicine. I was in clutches and had to do sand walking and use sand bags as a tool to get the knee strengthened.”
“Dr Zaman was an inspirational person and gave me the confidence that I can wear the baggy blue TN Cap again. He motivated me to get back into the TN side.”
Former Ranji opener UR Radhakrishnan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2018/03/ur-radhakrishnan.html) started his cricket career with SVPB in the early 1980s. His emergence as a young boy coincided with Srinivasan’s arrival at the Udumalpet club “He was a dedicated and a neat cricketer and showed me the way to play a big innings. He would never throw his wicket away. I learned a lot playing along with him in my early growing up years at SVPB.”
Memorable 175 N.O for Coimbatore
PR Ramakrishnan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2021/10/pr-ramakrishnan-coimbatore-cricketer.html) is now a renowned lawyer in Coimbatore. He had been in the TN Ranji squad for four years in the early 1970s but did not play a single match and returned to his home town to pursue his profession. He played for the Coimbatore Districts till the mid 1980s and recalls Srinivasan from that phase “To go to Bombay in the late 1970s and break into that team as a batsman was a phenomenal achievement. It was considered almost impossible for a batsman from Madras to do that. He brought that experience and confidence into Coimbatore and scored runs aplenty. While I was at the receiving end of many of his superb knocks for SVPB for he scored big against Ramakrishna Steels, I also batted together with him for Coimbatore Districts and was impressed with his technical soundness. He batted No.3 and I followed in at No. 4 and hence many a time we batted together and forged good partnerships. The big century against Salem in the SS Rajan final was a standout knock that I remember.”
Ramki, like most others in the cricketing circuit, has found him to be a good friend after the playing days “Off the field, he was a nice bloke to get on with and we have kept up our friendship over the last four decades. I am really happy that he has done well for himself in the real estate space.”
He is people friendly and always has a good word about his fellow cricketers from the 70s and 80s.
Talks his way into the TN Ranji team
In the first game after the injury, he scored a century in the league. It was that big century (175 NO) in the SS Rajan Trophy final for Coimbatore against Salem that got him back into the reckoning but not before he had marketed himself with Sriraman “I had scored big runs that season but didn’t get picked for the Gopalan Trophy match in Sri Lanka in January 1983. I went to Sriraman and asked him as to what more I had to do to get picked for TN. A month later I was in the squad.”
With R Madhavan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/10/r-madhavan-tn-cricketer-1980s.html) getting injured in Sri Lanka against Rumesh Ratnayake, Srinivasan got picked and scored 148 in a double century stand with his SVPB team mate NP Madhavan (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2016/05/np-madhavan.html)in the pre quarter final game against UP helping TN recover from a tricky situation. In the next match he scored a half century against Delhi in the 2nd inning in a big partnership with CS Suresh Kumar to help TN avoid outright defeat.
Best 12 months in cricket
At the start of the next season, he had a memorable century partnership with R Madhavan on that unplayable morning at Chinnaswamy Stadium against Karnataka in December 1983 to help TN recover from losing three wickets for three runs in the first few minutes on the first morning. Following his half century, he had a good outing against Andhra and then helped TN seal an outright victory against Hyderabad with an unbroken 70+ partnership with Jabbar when the team was stuttering in its 200 plus chase. In the big knock out game against Delhi, he scored another century though he failed in the crucial first innings. It had been a satisfying 12months for Srinivasan and it was to turn out to be the best phase for him in Ranji cricket having scored over 500runs since making a comeback in February 1983.
He was in and out the next year though he had an opportunity to shine against his former Ranji team Bombay when TN played them in the knock out. Unfortunately Srinivasan failed in both the innings and that signaled the end of his career with the next generation of batsmen making their way into the TN team.
It had been his dream to play club cricket in Australia and he received an invitation from Waverley CC (Tony Grieg and Geoff Boycott played for them) in the mid 1980s but once again destiny played its role and he could not get his visa through. Almost 35 years later, through Indian bowling coach B Arun, he managed to get a special ticket to watch India’s great win in Sydney, where he also met his old TN Schools mate ES Nataraj.
Cricket to success in Real Estate
At his peak in the second half of the 70s, Srinivasan had cherished the India dream like any young cricketer and his big scores for TN schools, Madras University, TN Colts and then his rapid rise in Bombay at the U22 level and his debut in the Ranji Trophy seemed to lead one to believe that he was in the right direction to reach the top of the cricketing ladder. He did play a few crucial innings in the early 1980s, but faded away not fulfilling the potential he had.
After a decade at SPIC where he worked alongside S Vasudevan and PC Prakash, among other cricketers, he moved away from cricket into entrepreneurship in the real estate sector where he has carved a name for himself over the last two decades. He did a lot of the marketing ground work for the popular Venus Constructions in the late 1990s /early 2000s. Despite the loss of his wife at a young age, Srinivasan displayed great resolve, as a single parent, in bringing up his two daughters, Megha and Manmitha, who both went to the Singapore University. Over the last two decades, taking care of them and making them independent in life has been his first job, says Srinivasan. “I am delighted that both of them are doing very well now in life.” And that is what is giving him the most joy at the moment.