Busi­ness ex­ec­u­tive and crick­et ad­min­is­tra­tor Arun Vit­ta­la has tak­en mas­ters crick­et to the next lev­el in the Unit­ed States and to a point now where it is well-or­gan­ised and well-re­spect­ed.

The Plano, Dal­las res­i­dent is a lead­ing fig­ure in mas­ters crick­et and has en­sured that it has tak­en its right­ful place in mas­ters crick­et world­wide. This sum­mer he will serve as the as­sis­tant coach of the Unit­ed States team that will trav­el to Cana­da for the Over60s Crick­et World Cup.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia Sports, he said, “I am very hap­py to see where mas­ters crick­et has reached. So many hard­work­ing peo­ple have en­sured that we have a right­ful place in world crick­et now.”

While all the teams are Amer­i­can, West In­dies play­ers like Faoud Bac­chus, Lawrence Rowe, Alvin Kallichar­ran and for­mer Trinidad play­ers like David Mo­hammed, De­onar­ine Deyal, and Ra­jin­dra Man­gal­lie would have all played mas­ters crick­et in the USA.

The Unit­ed States will al­so have a team at the IM­CC Over-40s World Cup to be held in Guyana this com­ing Oc­to­ber. Vit­ta­la con­tin­ued, “When we start­ed mas­ters crick­et in the Unit­ed States, there were just a hand­ful of teams. Now we have so many teams that we have dif­fer­ent zones now. We have mas­ter crick­et at the zon­al lev­el, and then this leads to the na­tion­al lev­el. We have over-40s, over-50s, over-60s, and re­cent­ly our over-70s played against Aus­tralia.

“We have mar­ket­ed this for­mat well, and play­ers are com­ing in by droves. One of the best things about mas­ters crick­et is the fact that when guys know that they have a tour­na­ment com­ing up, they keep them­selves fit in prepa­ra­tion for the crick­et. This, to me, is one of the great­est ben­e­fits of mas­ters crick­et: keep­ing your­self fit, eat­ing prop­er­ly, and stay­ing an ath­lete for as long as pos­si­ble.

“Health food com­pa­nies are now see­ing the val­ue of part­ner­ing with us, be­cause the mas­ter crick­eters take care of them­selves.”

Vit­ta­la has a deep his­to­ry with the game of crick­et back to his ear­ly years in In­dia, where he would have crossed swords with many play­ers who went on to rep­re­sent In­dia.

One of his more cel­e­brat­ed mo­ments would have been in 1986 when, through the ef­forts of busi­ness­men Sankar Ra­mani and Vit­ta­la, the World Cup-win­ning In­di­an team vis­it­ed Texas to play against Dal­las Crick­et Club, led by Vit­ta­la. For good mea­sure, Vit­ta­la grabbed two leg­ends in the match with the spin bowl­ing.