Film director Saji Surendran roars with laughter when I ask if matches of the Celebrity Cricket Fraternity (CCF) teams are being played. It is almost 12 noon, temperatures soar and the sun is bright and blinding. The games are part of a cricket tournament being organised by Online Fight Riders, a CCF team, at Rajagiri cricket field in Kakkanad. “As long as it doesn’t rain, we will play,” he says, adding “Heat and sweat don’t matter, only the game does.”
This league which began in 2011 with four teams, now has 20 teams, made up of film, media, and television industry professionals. It includes film actors, directors, assistant directors, musicians, producers, choreographers, television actors, mimicry artistes, and media professionals. Professional cricketers are not permitted unless they are over 40 years of age and have not played formally for at least five years.
Some teams such as Media Strikers Kerala, Cochin Music Challengers or Kerala Director’s XI are homogeneous — made up of players from one profession, there are others such as Cochin Super Kings and Millennium Stars which are a mix of actors, directors, mimicry artistes and assistant directors. Each team has around 20 players including the playing 11. About 10 tournaments are played though the year, depending on the availability of a ground. All the grounds where the teams cuurently play are maintained by the Kerala State Cricket Association (KSCA).
While the league began out of a love for cricket, over the the last nine years it grown into something for which “some of us push back work,” jokes Saji Surendran, who is secretary of CCF. Since his team is playing in the ongoing tournament, he has postponed a meeting. Similarly Saju Navodaya (Pashanam Shaji), an avid cricketer and captain of the Mimicry Artists Association Fighter (MAA Fighters), was to travel to Chennai to participate in Bigg Boss. However, since MAA Fighters was organising the tournament, in December, he left only after it was done. “This sport is a passion for us and more than that a great stress buster, a way to relax,” says singer Prakash Babu, captain of Cochin Music Challengers (CMC).
- Saji Surendran says conducting tournaments gets expensive. To keep them within budget more matches are packed into a day: Four 15 over games for initial matches and 20 over games for semis and the finals. These matches start at 7.30 am and go on till 6.30 pm.
- Renting the grounds costs between ₹ 20,000 – 30,000 per day, so a five-day tournament will cost organisers more than a lakh rupees.
- Therefore the hunt is on for a permanent playing field, “We could lease a playground. We would then spend the money on our own ground. Last year alone we paid close to ₹22 lakh for a ground. If we have our own ground we have a permanent location, which we are aiming at,” says Mahesh.
- Surendran adds the ground can be used by other teams as well.
For others, being part of CCF gave them new opportunities cricket-wise like playing with the stitched ball. “When most of us were kids, we played with rubber balls. But with the formation of CCF as it was called, we got the real deal,” says Saji Krishna, vice captain of MAA Fighters. While CCF began as an informal group, where teams got together to play casually, in May 2019 it was formalised as an association. “That brought about a certain degree of discipline on the ground. It became systematic when it came to organisation,” says Saji Surendran.
Though some teams have coaches, most don’t. MAA Fighters, in its initial days, had a coach for a couple of months to ready them for the league but they have been on their own after. “Anyway our patterns are set when it comes to how we play. Nothing much can be changed, only minor corrections which we work on amongst ourselves,” says Saji Krishna, adding that Kapil Dev is his cricketing icon. “I even mimic his bowling action,” he jokes.
Most teams practise as and when they get time, some like Saji Surendran hit the nets (indoor) daily.
A majority of these teams have sponsors, while some like MAA Fighters do not: Saju pays the entire expenses of the team. A team has expenses right from registration with the association to travel. Then there are the costs incurred during a playing season, which lasts eight months minus the time it rains.
Besides there is the cost of renting a ground and conducting tournaments. The funds for these come from the entry fee each team pays to play in a tournament, the registration fee that they pay to join CCF and of course, from the sponsorships.
Physical fitness, an inevitable outcome of playing any sport. The biggest payoff, however, has been the camaraderie that playing sport has generated, says media professional Mahesh Poloor of Media Strikers Kerala.
Saji Surendran says new projects have gone live because of it. The Mammootty-starrer Pullikkaaran Staraa was one. The director of the film Shyamdhar got to meet the superstar, through George, his secretary, who captains Cochin Super Kings.
“This is a great networking opportunity and over and above, this is one place where everybody irrespective of what they do — act or direct or assist or choreograph — comes together on one ground sans hierarchy or protocol. We are all friends here,” he adds.