Forthe last 18 years,for two months before each domestic season,Hrishikesh Kanitkar has turned up at the Poona Club ground at nine every morning. Kanitkar may have skippered Rajasthan to back-to-back Ranji Trophy titles,but hes training as hard as ever. The Rajasthan team are a talented lot, he says. I need to be at the top of my game in order to justify my place in the team. Kanitkar is ready to embark on his 19th Ranji Trophy campaign,having begun in 1994-95 with his native Maharashtra. Its been a great journey with some fantastic people, he says. The last two years have been exceptional and I want to win the title for the third time. Taking over a team that was rock-bottom and was famous for its dressing room politics must have been quite a task. But the project of moulding young players into winners excited Kanitkar. When the RCA approached me,their brief was clear. They said that I had the freedom to take decisions, he says. Building open relationships with my players was my top priority. These relationships didn't crop up overnight. At first,most of the young players were constantly looking over their shoulders. They expected to be dropped after one bad game. I made it clear that I would stand by them,no matter what, says the 37-year-old. Kanitkar recounts an example from a pivotal game,last seasons semi-final against Haryana at Lahli. We scored just 89 in the first innings. Rituraj Singh got hit for a couple of boundaries and thought I would replace him, he says. I told him he was bowling in the right areas and should continue doing that. He ended up with seven wickets in that innings. Kanitkar spent 14 years with Maharashtra,and looks back at that time fondly. I played with some fantastic players and winning a title with them would have been great, he says. But by the end of the 2007 season it was clear I had to move on.
