On August 15, 1968, Ramnagar, a residential locality in the city where cricket was then more of a street sport that a few schoolboys played after school, saw its own cricket club come up. Sankaranarayanan, fondly known as Dhanna, a textile industrialist, started the Friends Recreation Club (FRC) to develop cricketers and the sport in the locality mostly populated by brahmans.
Back then, there were not too many private cricket clubs or leagues, besides those owned by big industries like LMW (Lakshmi Group Club), Venkatesa Paper Boards (Udumalpet Cricket Club) and Ramakrishna Steel Mill (Ramakrishna Cricket Club).
“However, those teams used to get star players who used to play for Madras University, the Coimbatore District, Chennai and even the state-level leagues, to play in their teams by employing them,” says Dhanna. “But I was clear that my team would have players only from Ramnagar,” he adds.
Dhanna, who knew his neighbours were more academically inclined, slowly began looking out for young cricketers in the area.
“Dhanna spotted me when we were playing gully cricket on the streets of Ramnagar,” recollects S Natarajan, who after playing for FRC went on to play for Tamil Nadu in south zone tournaments, and the senior combined District Cricket Tournaments.
Dhanna also spotted Arun Nayak who played for the district, Madras University, state-level and south zone school. “I was spotted when I was 14. We would practice at the Suburban High School Grounds on Kalidas Road,” he says. Since Dhanna was an alumnus of the school, he got permission to practice there.
Natarajan recalls about the cricket gear available to players those days. “As a wicketkeeper our gloves and batting pads used to be very hard and every time the ball hit our hands, it used to sting,” he says. “We also had only a couple of cricket kits, so every time a batsman was out he had to give the next batsman his pads and gloves,” he adds. Dhanna says, “Most of the players I spotted were youngsters who did not know much about cricket and played with trees as stumps and tennis balls.”
“Me being an all-rounder I created a team from the boys, training Natarajan to be a wicketkeeper, some boys to be bowlers and some of them like Arun Nayak, Ramaseshan as batsmen,” he adds.
Despite the team having been built from scratch, the FRC made an indelible mark on Coimbatore cricket.
“There used to be first, second and third division in cricket those days. In hardly two years we ploughed our way from third division to first division,” says Natarajan.
“We made waves by winning trophies competing with star-studded teams. During my final year, our team beat the Lakshmi Groups Sports Club. And it was on that day that I was offered a job as a sportsman in LMW,” he adds.
However, Natarajan and Dhanna lament the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association’s habit of preferring only Chennai and Chengelpet for the Madras division and state teams because of the proximity. Despite this, at least 10 players from FRC & RCC have played at the Coimbatore District and combined district level.
FRC & RCC members recently contributed a cheque for Rs 1.39 lakh towards construction of a world-class cricket stadium at SNR grounds in the city to the Coimbatore District Cricket Association.