When you’ve played cricket professionally for as long as Naveen Rajappa has, sparks of inspiration are bound to fly. This 33-year-old from Bengaluru is the brain behind The Cricket Network, a one-of-a-kind socio-professional network for cricketers across the globe. And South African batsman, Herschelle Gibbs is on the board as an advisor too! What is it? We find out.
“It’s a bit of Facebook and a little of Linkedin for cricketers,” he tells us. Founded a year ago, this allows cricketers, especially those starting out professionally on the pitch, to exchange how the sport is played across geographies. According to Naveen, a few hundreds are already on the site, including from countries like UK, Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Middle East.
An engineer, Naveen has played for KSCA’s 1st division and for the Wadiyar’s Cricket Club for over four years. “I noticed that like myself, a lot of kids aspired to wear the cap – be it the Ranji, IPL or for the Indian team. It’s just a small bucket of players who are present in all three. Ignorance in the selection process can lead to talent drain. We wanted to build a platform that plugs that gap,” he says. Unlike other social media platforms that allows you to follow your favourite sports stars and get score updates, this free-to-use network aims to connect the cricket fraternity.
Although he didn’t make it to the national squad Naveen doesn’t seem to have given up. “Look at Pravin Tambe who made his IPL debut at 41,” he simply states, continuing to play for clubs and corporates. His undying passion is now an inventory of sports business ideas as he is excited about another feature that he can’t stop talking about. “Back in the day, we had log books to record data. If we lost it, we’d lose out. This network also aims to digitally keep a record of this, store it on cloud and allow access from anywhere. Imagine for team India’s selectors to actually refer to this – that’s the vision,” he says. As the network aims to launch in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, UK, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand, West Indies, South Africa, US and the Middle East, he hopes he can expand it to include other sports as well.
When it’s not all about cricket, Naveen tells us that he is a travel buff and a motorcycle junkie who hops on to his Thunderbird and whizzes away on long rides. “We’ve covered most of South India. Next is the tiger belt in Madhya Pradesh once we hit 50,000 users on the site,” he says. And guess what? They are well on their way.
