Vidhvath Viswanathan Concordia Netherlands Cricket

There is an urge in every cricket fan to go out on to the field sometime in their lives even if they are past 30 or 40 to pick up a five wicket haul or score a century and to reminisce their performances that helped the team win. It would have inconceivable a couple of decades ago for a Mylaporean to be a top performer in the Dutch Cricket league. Those who went overseas in the 1990s and 2000s on the back of a job in a Tier 1 IT firm were focused on slogging it out at office and finding a bride to settle down into a family life. There are those who had some cricketing ambitions in Madras but could not spend enough time at practice and on the ground with their focus being to score high grades in Class XII and to come out in flying colours in their Engineering so they could fulfil their parents’ wish of getting that ‘plump’ job overseas for a ‘settled’ career. Even historically way back in the 1970s, as seen in the story on S Srivathsan, there were those like the former CFO of Wheels India Ltd., who were madly interested in cricket but focus on CA and professional degrees kept them away from the cricket ground after a stage (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2020/06/srivathsan-cricket-to-tvs-cfo.html).  As seen in the recent story on a state cricketer, S Srinivasan, who played Ranji Trophy for Bombay and TN, even he cherished dreams of playing at the SCG and MCG and had in fact received an invitation from Waverly but could not get his Visa processed (https://prtraveller.blogspot.com/2022/08/s-srinivasan-tn-bombay-ranji-svpb-spic.html). Srinivasan had told this writer recently that even entering the SCG and MCG after he had turned 60 and watching matches there gave him a lot of satisfaction and made him feel as if he was almost playing there.

During the Pandemic, this section had featured a story on Promodh Sharma, a once T. Nagar Somasundaram ground cricket player  and a first division cricket from the early 1990s, finding great joy in the half centuries that he, in his late 40s, scored playing club cricket in Hongkong in between the stressful days at work as an entrepreneur. Cricket over the weekend was a great stress buster for him.

Mylaporean Vidhvath Viswanathan schooled at Adarsh and then bagged a coveted Bio Tech seat at Sastra University, Thanjavur While he cherished dreams of bowling with the Red Ball during his childhood like all boys his age, the focus on academics did not permit him enough time at the cricket ground.  Thus he satisfied himself through his school days playing tennis ball cricket at the backyard and on the streets of Mylapore.

A high score in Engineering led Vidhvath to a Masters and Engg D (almost a P. hd equivalent) in Netherlands and then a job with a multinational pharma company that produced life-saving medicines. Into his late 20s, he decided to fulfil his cherished dream of opening the attack with the red cherry (life in the mean time has moved into white ball cricket though) and joined league cricket in Netherlands, a format that he was playing for the first time in his life. While he spent the weekdays supporting and improving the production of life saving drugs, he began to find new joy in life expressing himself on the cricket ground.

The success and the failure in these matches has given him a great deal of learning to manage the vagaries of life. From a shaky start to the cricket season, cricketing injuries and a bit of a low, quite unbelievably, this month he has turned the fortunes of the club and produced a star turn that has saved his club stave off relegation. In three matches, he picked up 11 wickets including his first fifer in his life, something he had only dreamt as a teenager sleeping in the hostel room at Sastra.

Today, at 30, he talks about bowling leg cutters and slower balls and ways to ‘think out’ an opposition batsman. In addition to deep thinking at work for he is one of those involved in the process of producing life saving drugs, he is also suddenly turning out to be a ‘thinker’ in cricket. And he has now begun to become involved in ‘cricket strategy’, and leading team meetings has become a regular every week feature in his life.

This season Vidhvath has picked up 22 wickets and for the 2nd year in a row has been among the top wicket takers. To add to his repertoire, he has also helped the team with a couple of unbeaten knocks with the bat in stiff chases at the backend of the innings giving him a Dinesh Karthik kind of 'finisher' feeling.

While research reports and certifying new product development will continue to be his forte, he has carved a niche for himself in cricket, albeit at the club level in the local league in Netherlands. It may not be top notch first division league cricket in Madras but nevertheless helping win matches for his club, finding joy in the performances of his teammates and spending the evening in a team dinner at the end of a cricket season are things that have given him a great bit of happiness. Cricket in the Netherlands has also helped him forge friendships that would otherwise not have been possible. Through the week the cricket team members are in touch to discuss the plans for the upcoming match and now for the next season.

Interestingly, to add to his cricketing interests, Vidhvath has this season turned into an official scorer too in Netherlands performing this role whenever he is not running in to bowl his leg cutters.