‘Ignored’ in UP, pitch curator set to take up B’desh assignment
LUCKNOW: One of the top pitch curators of the BCCI Shiv Kumar Yadav may not hold any importance for the ex-India cricketer and sports minister Chetan Chauhan-led Uttar Pradesh Sports Directorate but he has been sought to render his services to the Bangladesh Cricket Board.
Shiv Kumar, 50, who prepared pitch for over 200 matches, including two dozen international matches at the Kanpur’s Green Park stadium during the last 15 years, was recently shifted to a place like Ghazipur.
He has now been picked up by the BCCI to prepare lively pitches in Bangladesh.
“I got a call from BCB after BCCI’s acting secretary Amitabh Chaudhary recommended my name for the job,” said Shiv Kumar. “I have submitted my CV to the BCB and a request letter to the UP Sports Directorate to relieve me for two years under the special leave scheme,” he said. Shiv Kumar, who started off as an electrician, did certification courses from the Sports Authority of India as well as the BCCI. In May last year, he was transferred to Ghazipur where cricket doesn’t happen and he is simply acting as an electrician.
“It’s really a great moment in my life and I am hopeful of getting government’s nod for my stint with the Bangladesh Cricket Board,” said Kumar, who had topped the BCCI’s certification course examination in 2015.
He, however, refused to disclose what he would do if the state government did not allow him to go to Bangladesh. “Let the refusal come, only then I will decide. One thing is sure that I am not going to miss this opportunity at any cost,” said Kumar, who has been BCCI’s consultant curator from the central zone.
Kumar’s passion for cricket pitch preparation began when despite being the college captain as a medium pacer at the Government Inter College in Bareilly at the age of 15, he developed the college pitch by his hand as there were no modern equipment then.
Within a year’s time after joining as an electrician at the regional office of the UP Sports Directorate in Allahabad in 2001, Kumar was transferred to Kanpur in 2002 which was like a dream come true for him.
He started upgrading his knowledge under the then BCCI’s pitch and ground committee head Kasturi Rangan when New Zealand Turf Centre had brought a scheme of preparing lively pitches in India.
Soon his skill of preparing good wickets at the Green Park
HE HAS NOW BEEN PICKED UP BY THE BCCI TO PREPARE LIVELY PITCHES IN BANGLADESH
stadium became the talk in cricketing circles. In 2004, he independently prepared his first pitch on his own during the India-South Africa Test.
“I was excited as well as apprehensive on all the five days as I would have been blamed in my first mission, had something gone wrong,” recalled Kumar.