Hemanth confident of bringing Alwarpet back to top

In 2018, Alwarpet bagged the SR Jagannathan Trophy for emerging victorious in the ‘Plate’ title decider against Jolly Rovers CC, the flagship of the Sanmar Group. The following year, in which the format underwent a rejig, perennial powerhouse Jolly Rovers avenged its previous season’s defeat by outsmarting Alwarpet in the summit contest.

With two podium finishes in the last couple of editions, the young team was once again expected to punch above its weight, in the 2019-20 season. However, Alwarpet never got going and has paid the costly price – suffering the drop to the Second Division alongside wooden spoon winner AG’s Office RC.

After the round-robin stage, Alwarpet (23 points) finished 11th on the table, four points behind 10th-placed Mylapore RC ‘A’. Ahead of the ongoing season, the league’s organising committee decided to shorten the length of the fixtures to just two days, putting more value on first innings advantage.

All through the campaign, Alwarpet was in the ascendancy after the opening exchanges only thrice – against India Pistons CC, MRC ‘A’ and Madras CC. In its remaining eight encounters, it conceded the lead seven times while its opener didn’t yield a result. The team’s head coach, C Hemanth Kumar, admitted his side was easily outplayed in a few matches.

“We are not here to give excuses. We didn’t play well. That being said, all teams apart from the four that qualified for the semi-finals were in the same boat. There wasn’t much of a gulf in quality,” former Tamil Nadu cricketer Hemanth told DT Next. Alwarpet, which settled for a second-place finish in the VA Parthasarathy (50-over) event this season, relied heavily on some players during the two-day games.

B Sai Sudharsan (635 runs), R Kavin (501 runs) and Manprit Juneja (495 runs) did the bulk of the scoring, with the rest contributing on a minuscule level. “Our batters could have done a lot better; we didn’t put enough runs on the board,” lamented Hemanth. Promising left-arm spinner M Siddharth, who is starting to become a mainstay in the state set-up, made the switch to Grand Slam CC during the off-season.

Hemanth felt losing a wicket-taker like him did make life difficult for Shijit Chandran-led Alwarpet. “Siddharth got us 50-odd scalps in the last two seasons. We brought in an outstation player – Saurabh Kumar, also a left-arm orthodox bowler. But then, he wasn’t available for all games,” added Hemanth whose Alwarpet had D Rahul(18 wickets) as its best bowler.

Having engineered stunning successes on the way to the 2018-19 final, the coach is confident of bringing Alwarpet back to the top-tier in the 2021-22 edition.