Cricket opens new horizons for disabled: Awardee
GURGAON: Disability is a challenge not a hindrance, said Ma han te sh GK iv ad as anna var, the chairperson of the Cricket Association for Blind in India( CA BI) in G ur ga on on Saturday as he detailed his plan to empower differentlyabled people in the city by opening cricket training centres within a month.
He exhorted all disabled people to not despair and focus on their abilities instead. He said individuals, corporates and the government should come forward to support visually-impaired.
Mahantesh will be awarded the National Award for the empowerment of persons with disability (Divyangjan) 2017 by President Ram NathKov ind at Vigyan Bhawan on Sunday.
The award,to bepresented on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities on December 3, will serve as an acknowledgement of his effort to encourage individuals to work for the progress of the disabled.
Mahantesh (48), who has 10 to 15 % of visual ability, runs the Samarthanam Trust that he founded in 1997. The trust organises cricket for the blind and trains the country’s visually-impaired national cricket team.
Under his tutelage, visuallyimpaired cricketers representing the country won the T-20 World Cup in 2012, one-day international world cup championship in 2014andtheT-20AsiaCupin2016.
At present, there as about 40,000 visually-impaired cricketers in India .
Speaking to HT, Shekh ar Naik (31), former captain of the India national blind cricket team for the blind and the recipient of Pad ma Shri in 2017, said ,“Cricket is a wonderful game and I developed an interest in it at the age of 11. This op ne sup new horizons .”