Ashok Mankad honoured posthumously with Lifetime award

MUMBAI: The 2008-09 Ceat Cricket Rating domestic awards on Tuesday night had a poignant touch when the late Ashok Mankad was posthumously conferred with Rs one lakh CEAT Lifetime Achievement Award.
His former India teammate BS Chandrasekhar was there to present the award. Ashok's wife, former Asian tennis champ Nirupama received the prize and said with a heavy voice,``I am grateful for this gesture by CEAT.''
Ashok, up there, would have been happy to know that three of the team he did yeoman service for, Mumbai, had three of the four awards, Wasim Jaffer (cricketer of the year--Rs 2 lakh), Dhaval Kulkarni (best bowler) and Saurav Netravalkar (best junior).
The one that got away, the best batsman award, went to Saurashtra's Cheteshwar Pujara, Jaffer's colleague at Indian Oil. The last three awards were worth Rs one lakh each.
Netravalkar beat fellow members of the champion Mumbai side, Iqbal Abdulla and Gaurav Jathar to the prize. He said he was grateful his coaches for the award.
Wicket-keepers usually get ignored in awards and this fate befell Vinayak Samant as it has Nayan Mongia before him. But Mumbai's lynchpin with 411 runs and 38 victims made his mark in a different role of entertainer with his mimicry.
Chandrasekhar said, "I am particularly happy that there is an award for u-19 players. Incentive at this stage is a boost that can never be gained."
There was a debate amongst former players BS Chandrashkhar, Nari Contractor, Chetan Chauhan and Nikhil Chopra on the topic: "On current form is India the next numero uno test cricket team in the world." Contractor seemed to prefer South Africa adding we had the potential.
Chauhan thought India was up there because of the young talent and balance and the belief is there for them to be No 1. Nikhil Chopra said the bench strength was there but we were not doing justice to the talent collectively.
Chandrasekhar said our team was doing consistently well and were bound to be No1 for a long time. Harsh Goenka, vice-chairman, CEAT Ltd, said, "CEAT Cricket Ratings has been a pioneer in identifying and honoring the potential cricketing talent of the country. Previous winners like Yousuf Pathan and Rohit Sharma have gone on to represent the Indian national team. I hope they will go on to win the highest international award also."