The Club Cricket Conference Yearbook 2020

- 32 - Min - Yes I have great memories of growing up in Mumbai and I still have a lot of connections with the place and remember going there many times off season and training there. I know Sachin Bajaj well and his set up is an outstanding place to train and also an outstanding place as young man to find out about yourself. Can you deal with the pressure of the heat, the oppressiveness, the noise and if you are from rural England then Mumbai is as far away as it gets. It certainly is a great little learning experience even if you are there for say 10 days: you can get absorbed in all the cricket, absorbed in all of Mumbai life and for a lot of people because of how different it is it immediately becomes a place you either love or not: you don’t get to ease into Mumbai life, it hits you in the face. From a cricket prospective you have bowlers everywhere and people willing to do anything you want from a cricketing angle and actually our relationship with Sachin and the Global Cricket School is a really special one that’s evolved over the years and expanded with Sachin offering a couple of spots for the winners, so Sachin has been a great supporter of ours and we hope he continues to be for many years to come. We have also sent the winners to Mumbai at the same time as Counties who would be training out there so it has worked really well. Q - Last year the Spin Scholarship trials had a different concept from previous years as they were focused more as a development day; how was that? Min - What was interesting about last year’s day was almost moving a little away from seeing quality spinners and then offering them a prize of going to the Global Cricket School in Mumbai and really seeing it as a two way street by trying out the development day approach. The main point was that even if they were not in the top five best spinners on the day, we wanted them to go away with some knowledge of what it took to get to the next level and it so became reciprocal where we wanted to provide a take home message that if you have aspirations to be a professional cricketer, to be around the professional environment, then these are the learnings, so we incorporated different aspects of performance cricket. In fact I hope that in some ways there was a reality check for some of those guys that cricket at the next level is not for them; and if that was the message one or two of them got them quite honestly they are better of getting that early then late and saving themselves a year or two and wishing they had known this sooner. Q - It was good to see that the association with the ECB meant that you also had Mo Bobat who now is the National Performance Director for Men’s Cricket present. How was that as an experience and what do you think it meant to the young players showing their skills? Min - At the time Mo was the National Identification Lead for the ECB so that role at the time was more suited to the day he came and joined us for. I thoroughly enjoy being in Mo’s company and thoroughly enjoyed having cricket conversations and listening to his ideas, which are not always off the page; and you can think a little bit laterally to a lot of people a lot of the time so having Mo there for sure added credibility to the environment and it was great to have him be part of the day. It was great to have Jigar Naik there too and he as an ex professional cricketer and spin bowler for Leicestershire CCC had words of wisdom for the young players as he’s been on the journey these guys are trying to get on; and over the years we have had Keith Medlycott, and John Emburey so every one of those in their own individual way has something to offer and Mo actually not being a spinner offered a very different dynamic in terms of talking about talent ID at the National level.