The Mumbai Cricket Association has pledged INR 500 crore for the development of grassroots cricket in Mumbai. At its annual general meeting, held at the Wankhede on Friday, September 11, the MCA said it will create the corpus over the next 10 years for the development of grassroots cricket, including school and college cricket, in the city.
“For grassroots cricket, we decided to allocate a corpus fund of Rs 500 crores. In the last AGM, we contributed Rs 100 crores and this time we did increase it to Rs 500 crores for our grassroots cricketers, clubs like maidan clubs, school clubs and college clubs,” MCA president Ajinkya Naik said after the general body meeting, as reported by Cricbuzz.
“It’s like an endowment fund. You keep this Rs 500 crores in a fixed deposit, and from that fixed deposit, the interest gets distributed. That is for providing kits, facilities, etc. So it depends on the clubs and how they want to use it. Sometimes they use it for logistics, sometimes they use it for cricket equipment, so there are different ways,” Naik added.
In other important news, the association has decided to name three lounges at the Wankhede after legends Sachin Tendulkar, Madhav Mantri and Ajinkya Rahane. A committee has been formed to make progress on the dedicated spaces for the three lounges. The association is also in the process of installing a statue of Dilip Vengsarkar inside the Wankhede complex, having already honored the Master Blaster with a life-sized statue during the inauguration of the resplendent MCA museum.
