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In the last one year that Tarak Sinha has been in-charge of the Rajasthan Cricket Academy (RCA) as its director, he was witness to several rounds of infighting at Sawai Man Singh Stadium complex.
He bore the brunt of it when he, along with coach Manoj Prabhakar, was sacked. Now back at the helm of affairs, Sinha wants his boys to get maximum exposure by playing various hot-weather cricket tournaments in the Capital .
The tournaments, he told Sportline on Wednesday, were ideal for the players to get a feel of the big league since district tournaments are yet to get underway in Rajasthan.
"This is the second year we have brought the RCA team to participate in Delhi tournaments," he said. "We were beaten all ends up the first time but we made significant gains this year."
The RCA boys finished runner-up to ONGC in Laxman Dass Chabbra memorial tournament, and on Wednesday made the quarterfinals of the ongoing GG Dutt tournament. They are also in the fray in Lala Raghubir Singh tournament.
With 58 first-class games under his belt, captain Vineet Saxena is the team's most experienced player, with middle-order batsman Robin Bisht being the other notable face. The others have been called up primarily to learn the art of surviving at the top level.
On Wednesday, the team learned valuable lessons in their one-wicket win over Madras Club at the St Stephen's ground.
The RCA side was cruising to a comfortable win, with the scorecard reading 54 for 2 in 10 overs, in reply to Madras Club's 203. But the drama started in the final 10 overs: with the asking run rate almost seven, five wickets in hand and a batting powerplay to go, the visitors had their nose ahead. Robin Bisht was well set and Arijit Gupta had just come in.
But second over into the batting powerplay, Gupta, Vivek Yadav and Afroj Khan left in quick succession. Soon, Bisht, after scoring 64, holed out by playing out three deliveries in the last over.
RCA tied the score on the penultimate ball and got home when Mohammad Arif's lofted slog-sweep to midwicket was misjudged by Suraj Yadav, thereby conceding a boundary.
Brief scores: Madras Club 203 all out in 39.5 overs ( Rameez Niyamat 70, Bhupinder Yadav 63, Mohammad Arif 3/34, Afroj Khan 3/42); RCA 207 for 9 (Robin Bisht 64, Vaibhav Deshpandey 39, Sharad Kumar 4/40, Suraj Yadav 3/44)
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