Retro Route: Santhome school’s cricketing lore never runs out of fizz

When two Santhome school watchers meet, cricket enters their conversation as surely as weather does when two Englishmen have a chat. The topic for this column came up on the sidelines of a discussion about the Golden Jubilee Reunion of 1976 batch of Santhome Higher Secondary School slated for June 7. While sifting through the accomplishments of the 1976 batch, the inevitable question was asked: “Any alumni from the 1976 batch made it to the national or state cricket team?” In the 1970s, Santhome school was on the way to cricketing greatness, but not until the mid-1980s would it be spoken of in glowing terms for its cricket. From the 1980s, the school produced cricketing giants who have embellished Tamil Nadu and India teams. Never mind that the 1976 batch cannot contribute to the topic. Recollections of Santhome cricket’s golden decades seem to have perennial topicality never paling on Madras nostalgia hunters, even if the memory synapse fires from the 1980s. A taste of T20 before T20 arrived