Cricket: Regarded as world’s first one-day competition, Kerala’s Pooja Knockout sports a new colour at 75 years

“I have fantastic memories of the Pooja tournament. This was a very important event for us before each Ranji Trophy season. A good warm-up opportunity for all teams,” said Kirmani.

“Those days, all the major industries and banks had strong cricket teams. Sandip Patil, Dilip Vengsarkar, G R Viswanath, and Roger Binny all used to come and play the Pooja cricket. I get goosebumps when I talk about those days,” added Kirmani.

The origin

The Palace Oval is believed to have come up on land that the British government gifted for the Princes Club, which was exclusive to the male members of the Cochin royal family, and was later renamed to TCC.

After independence, KV Kelappan Thampuran, a member of the royal family and the first secretary of the Kerala Cricket Association, conceived the Pooja Knockout cricket tournament with 50-over matches at a time when limited-over cricket matches were largely unheard of around the world.

Hosts TCC, boasting the likes of Kelappan Thampuran and Ravi Achan, who was Kerala cricket’s first big name, beat Kottayam Cricket Club to win the inaugural edition in 1951 and went on to repeat the success for the next two years as well. Later, strong departmental teams like State Bank of India (SBI), India Cements and Chemplast Chennai became regular fixtures at the tournament and serial winners.

The Tripunithura Cricket Club team that won the first ever Pooja Knockout in 1951. (Credit: TCC)

The Pooja tournament helped popularise cricket in Kerala and drew large crowds. The Palace Oval, known for its short boundaries, saw spectators lining up the eastern and northern walls of the ground. Initially, the matches were played on matting wickets, and later, Palace Oval became the first ground in Kerala to have a turf wicket.

P Balachandran, a former Kerala captain and coach, said performance in the Pooja tournament, which coincides with the Navratri season, was a major metric for selecting Kerala players for the Ranji Trophy in the early years.

“During that time, there were no inter-district matches. Several players got opportunities because of their performance in this tournament. The quality was also high because several big names would turn up,” he said.

ML Jaisimha, Brijesh Patel, Arun Lal, Mohammad Azharuddin, VB Chandrasekhar, Anil Kumble, Sunil Joshi, Shivlal Yadav, Krishnamachari Srikkanth, Rahul Dravid, Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Singh, L Sivaramakrishnan, Sadanand Viswanath and Pankaj Dharmani are some of the major Indian cricketers to have graced the tournament over the years.

As the international cricket calendar has become hectic and departmental teams have almost ceased to exist, tournaments like the Pooja Knockout have gone off the radar. Despite this, TCC has conducted the tournament even during the pandemic years and for the last several years, the matches have been 45-over affairs.

Kerala Ranji Trophy captain Sachin Baby welcomed the move to conduct Pooja Knockout matches under floodlights.

“When I started playing the tournament in the late 2000s, for my club, Swantons, the public had a lot of interest, and there used to be huge crowds. But over the years, that interest has somehow gone down, and I could see that when I came here to play for my departmental team, AG’s Office. Having matches at night under floodlights will definitely attract more people to the ground and will boost the tournament’s profile,” said Sachin.

Sachin also said that playing matches under floodlights will benefit many young cricketers, as it will prepare them well for tournaments such as the Kerala Cricket League, the Kerala Cricket Association’s T20 franchise league. He said people from other states also hold the tournament in high esteem. “When we went outside Kerala to play matches, the players there said that the competition at Pooja cricket had made them better players. It is a regret for me that for the last few years I have not been able to play this tournament due to prior commitments.”

The Palace Oval ground under floodlights.
(Express photo
by Narayanan S)

Tournament in two phases

The 75th edition will be held in two phases. In the first phase, from September 15 to 29, 18 teams from Kerala will compete for four qualifier slots. In the second phase, from October 1-15, the four qualified teams will join eight other teams from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka for round-robin matches in four pools of three teams. The winners of each pool will go through to the semifinals on October 16 and 17 before the grand final on October 18.

“Only the matches in the second phase and the knockouts will be played under lights. However, the pink ball will be used for all matches, including the day matches in the first phase,” said Santosh Sleeba, TCC president.

TCC has decided to use pink balls instead of white balls, which is the usual practice for matches under floodlights, because of visibility reasons as the players will continue wearing white jerseys, said Dr Kunal Viswam, cricket in charge of TCC.

“We have taken the feedback from the former players who played in the inaugural exhibition match under lights. In the coming days, we will organise more trial matches involving our junior players to test the visibility of the pink ball under lights before the games at night begin on October 1,” said Viswam.

On September 11, in honour of Kelappan Thampuran’s legacy, his daughters Hema Malini and Padmaja handed over a flag, which was to be hoisted during the tournament’s opening ceremony, to the organisers.