Amul Cricket Club – 1975-76 Story

• By Ernest Joseph with contributions from Mahendrabhai Seth

Amul Cricket club in the 70’s was very active in participation in local tournaments and Sunday matches with local teams and teams from other neighboring towns and villages. For some matches, Amul was the host at our lush green central lawn (remember?), while for some matches, we traveled together using Dairy’s Ambassador cars or even public transportation.

And my favorite part during the home games? During the lunch break, we ate Puri Bhaji (puri and dry potato bhaji) at Amul Canteen. Yum! I used to love to eat this canteen’s specialty!!

Cricket was even bigger part of my life than Badminton for a simple reason – Cricket is the passion of India and most popular sport in the country. And not to mention dressing up in clean and crisply pressed cricket whites on Sunday morning always got catcalls from ladies during those college competitions matches at university cricket tournaments.

Mr. Dilip Sonalkar, our fearless leader of the Amul Club, was also the captain of the team. Dilipbhai was an opening batsman and a wicket keeper. But his role as a captain was exemplary. Personally, I was fortunate to be able to learn from Dilipbhai during my teenage years @ Amul. His encouragement to me to be developed into an all-rounder resulted in my playing on college teams of M.B. Patel Science College and J &J College of Science in Nadiad as well.

Sonalkarbhai with daughters Monica and Swapna

His opening partner, Mahendrabhai Seth (Shah) was an active player for Amul for almost every match we played during the 70’s. He started playing cricket at age 15, until he turned 45. Blessed to play for 30 years! Mehendrabhai is keeping his physical activities by running distances from 5K to 21K (half marathon) and has done some long distances greater than marathon over the years.

Mr. Mahendrabhai Seth at a 10K race

And, at the glamorous one down position in the batting lineup, we had our celebrity player representing Amul club – Mr. Bipin Patel. Bipinbhai played for Gujarat Ranji Trophy team as a wicket keeper and opening batsman during the 60’s. He was a textbook player as a batsman. I was able to learn a lot from him to improve my batting skills. Although his specialty was wicket keeping on defense, he always played as a fielder and allowed Dilipbhai to keep the wickets. Bipinbhai currently resides in UK.

In middle order line up, one name I remember is Mr. Suresh Joshi. Affectionally known as Joshia, he had a signature square cut drives with a flick of his wrist. Amul’s own Gundappa Vishvanath!

On the defense side, our regular opening bowlers were R.D. Patel and A.C Bhatt, and I would step in at some point while the ball was still new to back up our openers. Both worked in accounting/purchasing department od Amul. A.C. Bhatt unfortunately passed away during Covid Pandemic. His son is currently working at Amul chocolate plant.

Of course, there are 11 players on a cricket team, so there were many others in the 70’s who contributed to the team, which resulted in Amul Club’s victories in tournaments like I. B. Patel tournament hosted by ELECON Engineering, and played on their grounds, Variava cup and Summer cup tournaments which were played at Sashtri Maidan.

In 1975-76 season, I recall our match against ELECON A team in the I. B. Patel tournament. The major teams I remember participating in this tournament were of course the host ELECON and us, but also Vallabh Glass factory who had some swashbuckling players, including Satish Patel. It was always coming down to these three teams to capture the trophy.

Our match with ELECON started with ELECON winning the toss, electing to bat. One of the openers waking to take the crease was Bhanubhai Patel, founder of the company. I was fielding in the short slip position, almost breathing on his neck. Mr. Bhanubhai at that time was not a spring chicken, but of course he was a big supporter of Cricket even back than that has resulted in today’s thriving ELECON Cricket Academy with their own stadium named after Mr. Bhanubhai Patel Pavilion.

But for this match, he played just the first opening over as a ceremonious gesture to start off the match. Once he was replaced by the regular opener, soon we were off to the competition.

On this day, the pitch was favorable to spin bowlers. The ball was spinning crazy so Dilipbhai decided to put me in the attack as left arm spin bowler. As you know, by statistics, most of the batsmen are right-handed batsmen in a given team, and left arm spinner is most effective in keeping them guessing and create all short of trouble.

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What happened next was only happens in a dream. I was able to take most of the wickets with a ridiculously low run rate average – in single digit run rate per wicket!

Next, it was our turn to bat. Yes, the wicket was still supporting spinners, so this was a close chase to get to the target. Dilipbhai was holding one end since he opened the inning, but at the other end, wickets were falling at regular interval.

When my turn came to bat down the batting order at around position 6 or 7, we had only few runs to score. Dilipbhai met me at the middle of the pitch when I entered to take the crease. His instructions were clear – “just defend the ball from hitting your pads or wicket, I will take care of the rest.”

Yes sir. I obliged. And soon, he was able to score a boundary to make our Amul Club a winner!

Wow! So awesome feeling! After the match, Dilipbhai took the entire team out to a movie “Dafli wale” at Gopal Talkies that evening to celebrate our win!

This particular year was very productive for me in the bowling department. I had taken more wickets during the year at a most economic rate. This earned me the trophy of the best bowler for 1975-76.

Well, these are mine and Mahendrabhi’s recollections from the 70’s. I had left India in September 1980, and had played my last match for the club after my marriage during one of these tournament in April or so of 1980.

But the club was still going strong. Many young kids of Amulite parents were being recruited into the Amula Cricket Club. The list is long, but we know that the younger generation was represented by Maulin Patel, Amul Sabnis, Ashok Doshi, Bhavesh Patel, Upendra Patel and many others. Bhavesh was also selected to play for Gujarat Ranji Trophy team and I am sure he must have opened many matches for Amul as the opening partner of Sonalkarbhai and Mahendrabhi.

Cricket scene has changed dramatically since then. Since 2010, Anand District Cricket Association is organizing Anand Premier League (APL). This is one of the prestigious tournaments in the Gujarat state. Anand Premier League has gifted several Ranji trophy, national Under 19 and T-20 tournament players. Notables are Akshar (Axar) Patel and Parthiv Patel under whose leadership Gujarat has won Ranji Trophy in 2016-2017 season.