Deccan Gymkhana

Deccan Gymkhana offers a lush green playfield which is exceptionally good to play first class cricket matches and is often called as the “Pride” of this famous cricketing institution. The enthusiasm of Puneites, who use to play cricket at the outskirts of the city, towards the end of the nineteenth century rose to its summit so that players started to volunteer putting in relentless efforts to nurture this piece of land so as to enjoy good game of cricket.

This laid the cornerstone of the Deccan Gymkhana club. Since its establishment, this famous club has hosted hundreds of first class matches. More famously so, a game of cricket was played between the Indian cricket team and Deodhar XI at the Deccan Gymkhana cricket ground in 1947 in the honour of Prof. D B Deodhar, the pitamah of Indian cricket.

The great Mahatma Gandhi extended his courtesy to pay a visit to the Deccan Gymkhana in 1923. Seeing at the activities and the proposed objectives of this club, the father of the nation “Bapu” (as he is well referred) was extremely delighted and impressed.

Deccan Gymkhana regularly conducts National tournaments and is a regular venue for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) matches. It offers a verdant play field including 12 sporting pitches confirming to norms laid down by the BCCI. This superb club provides separate dressing rooms for teams and match officials, a comfortable viewing area for players, a pop-up sprinkler system and movable sight screens. The unique facility of Deccan Gymkhana is an artificial pitch that is provided helping the club to foster cricket in monsoons as well.

The club which has seen the young Tendulkar’s and Dravid’s performing here in their early days also provides a chance for young players who have a dream of making it to the top level by letting them participate in maximum tournaments, which does build their confidence and inspire to practice harder to play better.

Perched in the heart of the city, this venue was the host of Maharashtra Premier League matches for 2009 edition. The MPL 2009 on this ground got a fabulous response in terms of the audience coming to watch the action and this time around will surely be packed to its full house capacity.

Poona Club

The Poona Club has one of the best cricket grounds in the city and holds an accolade of staging first class cricket matches on a regular basis. Poona Club and cricket has deep ties with each other dating way back to 1885. The British are credited for introducing the game in 1885 at the Poona Club—which was then open only for the Englishmen. Earlier the name of this club was known as Counsellors’ Club. The Club was then re-named as Poona Gymkhana. The Poona Gymkhana and the Loyal Polo Club in Poona Cantonment area, were merged and re-christened as Poona Club Limited. The Bombay Governor Lord Harrison, a keen cricketer himself, was responsible for spreading cricketing activities through Poona Club in this city. The first official level cricket contest was introduced in 1895 in India in the form of the duel contest played between the Europeans and the Parsis in Bombay and Poona at the Poona Club ground. From 1907 onwards the Triangular series tournaments were introduced and held at the Poona Club, which was soon to turn into the popular quadrangular series.

One of only ten first-class quadruple centuries was scored at the ground by B. B. Nimbalkar in December 1948. He reached 443* playing for Maharashtra in a Ranji Trophy match against Kathiawar. It is the only first-class score of 400 or more by a cricketer who was never selected to play Test cricket. The opposing captain, Thakore Saheb of Rajkot, conceded the match when Nimbalkar was nine short of Don Bradman's then world-record score of 452*. The Poona Club offers several developing sportsmen an opportunity to train with the best facilities and play their sport at a high level. Some of the major cricketers who have groomed within the confinements of this wonderful venue are Mr. Chandu Borde, Mr. Hemant Kanitkar, Mr. Hrishikesh Kanitkar and Mrs. Shubhangi Kulkarni to name a few.

This famous club offers 22 practice wickets including 9 wickets with box nets. The Poona Club cricket ground meets the international standards by providing the playing field and the pitch being planted with special Bermuda grass, which grows faster and makes for speedier and competitive play. The Poona Club offers popup sprinklers that help maintaining the water requirements of the grass. This famous club situated on the Bund Garden Road has supported cricket for several years now by offering plenty a chance to train and play this wonderful sport.