We all love M.S Dhoni and his movie M.S Dhoni – a love story.
Most of the cricket fans of India must not have known about the Cooch Behar trophy until they have seen the movie.
The Cooch Behar Trophy is India’s national four-day cricket tournament for under-19 players. It has been held annually since the 1945–46 season. It is run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India.
Matches are played over four days. All the Ranji Trophy teams field sides, except for Railways and Services. The sides are divided into four groups, each of which plays a round-robin. After the group matches are completed, quarter-finals, semi-finals and a final are held.
Why the Railways and Services u19 team doesn’t participate is obvious from the fact that most of their players have some sports quota job or they have moved from other state to play, so its very difficult to feature a u-19 team for them.
In the M.S Dhoni movie there came a scene when Dhoni says – ” Aur fir aaya Yuvraj Singh, itna maara ki dhaaga khol diya”.
M.S Dhoni was talking about the mammoth 358 run innings from the stylish and now father of 2 child, Yuvraj Singh.
M.S Dhoni also fought hard for his team, scoring 84 runs, but who were the other batters who shown promise in the 1999 edition of the Cooch Behar Trophy.
Here is the list of top 10 run scorers of the cooch behar trophy 1999/2000/
| Name | Matches | Innings | Not out | Runs | High Score | Average | 100 | 50 | ct | Team |
| Yuvraj Singh | 7 | 9 | 0 | 765 | 358 | 85.00 | 2 | 3 | Punjab u19 | |
| RR Das | 7 | 11 | 0 | 682 | 172 | 62.00 | 3 | 2 | 11 | Orissa u19 |
| Manish Sharma | 7 | 9 | 0 | 566 | 173 | 62.88 | 2 | 2 | 8 | Punjab u19 |
| R S Ricky | 6 | 8 | 1 | 524 | 201 | 74.85 | 2 | 2 | 5 | Punjab u19 |
| V Mahajan | 5 | 6 | 3 | 510 | 204 | 170 | 2 | – | 3 | Punjab u19 |
| P Chawla | 6 | 7 | 3 | 489 | 125 | 122.25 | 2 | 3 | 12 | Delhi u19 |
| M.S Dhoni | 9 | 12 | 0 | 488 | 84 | 40.66 | – | 4 | 17 | Bihar u19 |
| BBCC Mahapatra | 7 | 12 | 0 | 443 | 83 | 36.91 | – | 6 | 3 | Orissa u19 |
| F Khan | 9 | 12 | 1 | 419 | 107 | 38.09 | 1 | 2 | 3 | Bihar u 19 |
As cricket is tough game in India, most of the players in the list progressed to play for their state, but didn’t come anywhere close to team India call up.
The closest to Indian team was Ravneet Singh Ricky who has played for India Red and Board President XI.
Ravneet Singh Ricky shown great promise in the 2000 u19 world cup under the leadership of Mohammad Kaif. He was the second highest run getter with 340 runs at an average of 42.50 with one hundred and two fifties. Many prominent batsmen from that edition went on to represent their country with distinction which includes Graeme Smith, Shane Watson and our very own Yuvraj Singh.
Recently Yuvraj Singh spoke about his post cricket plans. He said he was interested in some role at Gujrat Giants, but Ashish Nehra said there are no roles available at the moment.
Yuvraj is keen to return to cricket in the form of mentor/ coach but he has to wait for a year or so when his both kids start going to kindergarten and he will have more time to himself.
As for M.S Dhoni, the most successful Indian captain is growing his hairs to give his fans the retro Dhoni look of 2006 and fans just couldn’t wait for the IPL to start.
