CHENNAI: Cricket is a universal language. Cricketing culture, however, isn't. At Super Kings Academy's first centre in Thoraipakkam, a young girl runs in to bowl to a boy, quietly challenging a stereotype that still exists in parts of the country.

At the adjoining ground, a coach is locked into the action, calling out instructions to a batter on his shot selection. Four nets are buzzing, bowlers are warming up, and batters are preparing to launch the ball into the floodlights, with parents seated patiently watching the action unfold closely. Some are even shouting instructions to their kids. 

Amidst all this chaos, SKA’s global head coach, Sriram Krishnamurthy, walks in to have a chat with one of the many coaches before turning his attention towards a six-year-old wicketkeeper, who has been quite chatty. 

"We [at SKA] view cricket as an alternative form of education. While our technical, tactical, physical, and mental curriculum is uniform, we are fundamentally a values-driven organization,” Sriram tells DT Next.

But for that philosophy to travel across geographies and cultures, it has to begin with the people delivering it. Sriram's own role reflects that approach: much of his responsibility lies not in coaching individual youngsters, but in developing the coaches who work with them.

“Alongside cricketing skills, our priority is instilling four core life values: discipline, resilience, selflessness, and problem-solving. Delivery formats may vary globally—like private sessions in Australia or a lack of red-ball cricket in the US—but our core philosophy, as SKA, never changes.”

That is no small task. SKA now has more than 25 academies across Tamil Nadu, while its footprint has spread overseas, with centres in the United States, Australia and Singapore, and expansion into Canada. For Sriram, it means the clock rarely stops. 

“Just as our Indian sessions wrap up around 6:30 in the evening, the United States wakes up, alongside our centres in Singapore and Sydney. Across Tamil Nadu alone, we manage over 150 coaches. The real challenge isn't just logistics and time management; it's maintaining quality control, ensuring consistent communication, and continuously upskilling our coaching staff so the players receive the standard of development they deserve,” he adds. 

But expansion brings its own challenge: what works at Thoraipakkam may not necessarily resonate with a youngster in Madurai, Vellore, Salem or Tirunelveli.

"You can never take expansion for granted. A model that succeeds in metropolitan Chennai won’t necessarily fit district centres, where conservative mindsets often prioritise academic milestones before committing to sport,” Sriram breaks it down. 

“You cannot enforce a rigid, top-down approach. If you put the player at the absolute centre of your decision-making and ask what they truly need, the right developmental answers evolve naturally."

For that philosophy to work, however, the player needs more than a coach and a net. SKA's expansion has therefore gone hand in hand with an infrastructure push across the state. Few understand the state’s grassroots landscape better than Louis Mariano, whose coaching career predates the academy by decades.

"I've been coaching for over twenty years now, but prior to CSK, I had never experienced infrastructure of this calibre. Having top-quality turf and astro-turf wickets, as well as floodlit grounds, completely changes the dynamic,” Louis Mariano, SKA’s Director of Cricket, tells DT Next. 

Finding talent is one thing. Keeping that talent moving forward is another.

"Pure talent alone won't take you anywhere—it truly won't,” Louis adds. “What actually sustains a cricketer's career as they move up the ladder is how they cope with adversity and execute under pressure in tough, grinding situations." It is impossible to just teach kids to handle adversity without putting them in match-like situations. 

"When the First Division league pauses, players outside the Ranji Trophy or Under-23 squads are left with no competitive cricket at all. We step in to fill that void by organising multi-day match simulations.

"Just this week, Rishab—a First Division player with MRF who had barely played this year—faced close to 200 balls and ground out a hundred in our three-day game. If we keep creating these match opportunities, in another three years, players like him will cement themselves as top First Division cricketers."

One thing that separates the academy from the others is how there are constant interactions with international cricketers, or camps where overseas cricketers train in Chennai conditions, giving young academy prospects a chance to rub shoulders and interact with seasoned pros.

“When kids watch professionals up close, they don’t just draw inspiration—they observe their habits and benchmark their own games. They see the gap, realise how close or far it is, and learn what is required to bridge it,” Sriram says before adding, “That early exposure demystifies pressure and prepares them to rise to big occasions without being overwhelmed."

With images of CSK players all across the academy, dreaming of the yellow jersey is inevitable. Sriram and SKA's job, however, is to ensure that the dream does not blind them to the steps needed to reach it.

“Wearing the yellow jersey is a distant dream. The immediate, realistic milestone for every aspiring cricketer in this country must be earning their state cap. Our job is to build them into strong, complete cricketers capable of playing for Tamil Nadu first—that is the true stepping stone."

But even that dream to become a state-level cricketer isn’t cheap, considering the rising cost of equipment and training sessions – which is where CSK’s driving principle of ‘giving back to the game’ comes into play. 

“Cricket is undeniably becoming an expensive sport, driven heavily by parental ambition and the boom in private one-on-one coaching. At CSK, our driving principle is giving back to the game. We are committed to ensuring no child is priced out of playing because of economics. Beyond athletic achievements, sport builds community, health, and character in the next generation,” Sriram says. 

Money is certainly a barrier. But access to cricket can also be shaped by culture and convention. The scene at Thoraipakkam, a girl sharing the pitch with boys, offers a glimpse of how SKA is attempting to challenge some of those barriers. Kamalini is perhaps the clearest example so far of what that pathway can produce when talent meets the right environment. The 18-year-old has already won a U-19 World Cup in 2025, and also donned the Mumbai Indians jersey in the Women’s Premier League. As recently as September 2026, she also won the Asian Games gold, rising through SKA’s academy from age 13. 

"Kamalini’s success has inspired every girl in the academy and across Tamil Nadu to emulate her. But because natural talent like hers is rare, reaching that level requires relentless work,” Louis opens up with fair warning. 

“We run intensive evening sessions for our girls—starting with tactical group work at 5:00 PM and continuing past 8:30 or 9:00 PM with endless throwdowns and high-volume drills under the lights. It’s an intensive, non-stop process, and through that sheer volume, we will certainly produce more Kamalinis in the future."

However, there’s no ‘guaranteed formula’ for success, and according to Louis, the philosophy of the academy is such that the cricketers who walk out of the Super Kings Academy go out as ‘good humans’, and not just cricketers. 

"The stark reality of sport is that not every kid who walks through our gates will play for India, the IPL, or the WPL. A day comes when players must either transition to the highest level or take up a conventional job to settle down in life. 

That's why our priority is building good human beings. We teach them how to handle triumph and, more importantly, how to absorb failure. When they leave our setup, they step into the world as resilient, mentally tough individuals capable of handling whatever life throws at them."

By the time we returned to the nets, the batch had changed. The faces were different, but the rhythm remained the same – coaches calling out instructions, youngsters waiting for their turn and floodlights keeping the session alive well into the evening.

Not everyone who walks through those gates will earn a state cap. Fewer still will wear the yellow jersey. But that, perhaps, is not the only measure of what SKA is trying to build.

"If you look two or three years down the line, the one thing Super Kings Academy has got spot-on is our ability to consistently produce quality cricketers,” Louis. 

The yellow jersey might still be the dream for many of these youngsters. But at SKA, the real education is the journey towards it – and the lessons they carry beyond the boundary.