Cricket opens new horizons for disabled: Awardee
GURGAON: Disability is a challenge not a hindrance, said Mahantesh G Kivadasannavar, the chairperson of the Cricket Association for Blind in India (CABI) in Gurgaon 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 bypresident Ram Nath Kovind at Vigyan Bhawan on Sunday.
The award, to be presented 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 2014 and the T-20 Asia Cup in 2016.
At present, there as about 40,000 visually-impaired cricketers in India .
Speaking to HT, Shekhar Naik (31), former captain of the India national blind cricket team for the blind and the recipient of Padma Shri in 2017, said, “Cricket is a wonderful game and I developed an interest in it at the age of 11. This opnes up new horizons.”