The Mumbai Cricket Association will build a Rs 500 crore endowment fund for grassroots cricket over the next decade, with interest from the corpus set to flow to maidan clubs, schools and colleges across the city. The decision came out of the MCA's 87th annual general meeting at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday.
MCA president Ajinkya Naik laid out the plan in plain terms. "For grassroots cricket, we have decided to allocate a corpus fund of Rs 500 cr, which was Rs 6 cr, then Rs 10 cr, then Rs 12 cr in the last three years. In the last AGM, we increased it to Rs 100 cr," Naik said.
The mechanism is straightforward. "It's like an endowment fund. You keep this Rs 500 cr in a fixed deposit and from that the interest gets distributed. Right now, it is Rs 100 cr, so every year it will go up by Rs 40 cr, and then in the next 10 years it will be Rs 500 cr," he added.
The jump from Rs 100 crore to a Rs 500 crore target represents a significant escalation in the association's financial commitment to the lower levels of the game. The fund's growth has been steady but modest until now, moving from Rs 6 crore to Rs 10 crore to Rs 12 crore across three years before the leap to Rs 100 crore at the previous AGM.
Mumbai's maidan cricket culture has long depended on local clubs and tournaments played across the city's open grounds. Schools and colleges feed players into that system, and the MCA's decision directs money toward those entry points rather than the professional circuit. The interest generated by the corpus will be distributed annually, creating a recurring stream of funding that does not eat into the principal.
The AGM also produced a separate decision regarding the Wankhede Stadium itself. The MCA will name designated lounges at the ground after three figures from Mumbai cricket's past and present: Madhav Mantri, Sachin Tendulkar and Ajinkya Rahane.
Mantri, who died in 2014, was a wicketkeeper-batsman who played for India in the 1950s and later served as a selector. He was also the uncle of Tendulkar, who grew up in Mumbai and went on to become the sport's leading run-scorer in both Test and one-day international cricket. Tendulkar's association with the Wankhede runs deep; his final international appearance came at the ground in November 2013, a Test against West Indies. Rahane, the current India Test vice-captain, has been a consistent presence in the Mumbai Ranji Trophy setup and captained India during their 2020-21 series win in Australia.
The lounge naming follows a pattern common at major cricket venues, where stands and facilities carry the names of players who have defined the ground's history. The Wankhede already has a stand named after Tendulkar, and the new lounges extend that recognition to Mantri and Rahane.
The MCA's move to grow the grassroots corpus comes at a time when Indian cricket's financial centre of gravity sits firmly with the Indian Premier League and the Board of Control for Cricket in India's broadcast deals. State associations have been under pressure to show that money from the sport's commercial boom reaches the base of the pyramid, where players first pick up a bat and ball.
Naik's figures trace the association's own trajectory on that front. The Rs 500 crore target is a ten-year projection, and the annual increments of Rs 40 crore will take the fund from its current Rs 100 crore base to the full amount. The interest distribution model means the money keeps working after the target is reached, rather than being spent down over time.
The AGM wrapped up with those two items as the headline outcomes. The Wankhede lounges will carry their new names in due course, and the grassroots fund will begin its climb toward Rs 500 crore with the next annual allocation.
According to Yahoo Sports.