The 1st and the youngest ICC Level 1 Coach from Vidarbha: Ankit Tiwari
When you have a guide like Sulakshan Kulkarni, who himself is a great Cricketer, you are definitely to leave your footmarks in Cricket. Yes, it is Ankit Tiwari, the 1st ICC level 1 coach from Vidarbha. Ankit Tiwari, started playing cricket just like a normal boy and slowly his game started improving and getting better day by day.
Ankit says, “The feeling I got while I was on the cricket ground was just different. It was just different from everything. My love was just with cricket.”
Ankit’s objective as a coach is to find the potential of a player and bring out the fullest of it. He wants to return something to cricket and India as a coach. When he was 23, due to some family issues he was forced to leave the cricket ground and join his father’s business. As a result he was far from the pitch for 3 years. But when his brother used to go to the ground to play, everyone would ask about him. As a result, he made a comeback in the local cricket circuit but unfortunately covid hit after an year and then he was forced again to take a break.
Fortunately, he met Sulakshan Sir again during the pandemic and that’s when his life changed. “As we had a lot of free time, we used to talk only about cricket and nothing else.”, he says. During the pandemic, it was Sulakshan Sir who told Ankit that it was the right time to quit playing cricket and start coaching young talents for future.
Ankit Tiwari, represented VCA in U15, U16, U19, U23 team. He was also the skipper of Maharashtra team at the school and College level. He has attended NCA ZCA cricket camps at junior level. He met Sulakshan Sir, during 2010, at VCA Residential Academy where he was for a good two and a half years. Sulakshan Sir was the batting coach there. Sir’s professionalism, his passion for cricket and his attitude towards cricket caught Ankit’s attention and he was so impressed that he started training under him. And that’s the reason why Ankit’s only motivation is Sulakshan Kulkarni. He says, “When you are with such a great personality, and spend all the time with him, the person who has always been my guide, you cannot think of anyone else as your motivation.”
Ankit’s advice to the younger generations is “The players during older times didn’t get a lot of opportunities and platform to showcase their talent. But now players do get an ample opportunity to prove himself. So If a player has a long term goal regarding cricket in his mind and he works hard for it, it won’t be much difficult for him to achieve his goals. Invest your time in cricket just the way you do with your studies and you’ll get the results.”
ICC Level 1 Coach Ankit Tiwari coaches full time at SGCS-SKCA cricket academy in Shegaon
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