Three Indians for Border-Gavaskar scholarship by CricketArchive staff reporter

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Player:

AR Border, SM Gavaskar

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DateLine: 20th June 2006

 

Kshemal Vaingankar, Gaurav Dhiman and Pinal Shah, three aspiring young cricketers from India, arrived in Sydney on Monday. They will participate in the six-week Border-Gavaskar scholarship programme at the Commonwealth Bank Centre of Excellence in Brisbane, and compete in next month's Emerging Players Tournament, giving them valuable match practice in Australian conditions.

 

The scholarship programme, named after former captains Allan Border and Sunil Gavaskar, was founded in 2000 by Cricket Australia and the Australia-India Council.

 

The centre's head coach Tim Nielsen said the programme helped foster strong cricketing relations between the two countries and said the trio would benefit enormously. "We pride ourselves on delivering the best cricket programmes available and the three scholarship winners will walk away with a lot more experience and understanding of cricket at the elite level and of Australian conditions," he said in a statement.

 

Vaingankar, a right arm medium pace bowler, plays for the Mumbai Cricket Association in the under-22 age group and was also selected for the All India University Team. Dhiman was a member of the Karnataka State Cricket Association team that visited Australia in 2005. The right hand opening batsman and right arm medium pace bowler has been with the National Cricket Academy in the under-19 age group for the last three years. Wicket keeper Shah plays for the Baroda Cricket Association and, like Dhiman, was a member of the India under-19 team for the last World Cup.

 

They were selected for the scholarship by a special committee of the Board of the Control for Cricket in India, chaired by Gavaskar.