For decades now, Dr Prakash Vaze has been urging Mumbai’s medical fraternity to take up sports

Long before T20 became so popular, a doctor in the Mumbai suburbs had already introduced the concept to the medical fraternity, as early as in the 1980s, although for different reasons.

Meet Dr Prakash Vaze, a general practitioner from Mulund and a product of the Shivaji Park cricket grounds, who introduced a 25-over game of cricket back in 1985 to promote cricket and sports among the medical fraternity. Now, at age 59, Vaze is promoting indoor games like chess, carrom and other competitive sports like badminton and table tennis among the younger generation through the Dr Prakash Vaze Sports Foundation.

Today also an umpire with the Thane Chapter of Association of Cricket Umpires, Dr Vaze says the journey from his first cricket match in 1979 to organising tournaments across Mumbai for doctors had its own benefits. “It all started in 1979, when I was requested to play a friendly cricket match representing the General Practitioners Association. While there was nothing remarkable about the match, it rekindled the urge to go back to the nets,” he recalls. Vaze, in his childhood days, had shared the nets with cricketers like Sandeep Patil and Dilip Vengsarkar, something par for the course if you were born and brought up in Lalbaug and went to Shivaji Park for some outdoor activity.

Soon the idea of starting a cricket team within Mulund, where he was later settled, germinated. It soon took shape of the Mulund Medico Sports Club—a team of 30 doctors who competed among themselves. “It was difficult in the beginning as most of us were consultants in hospitals and also had our own private practice. Sometimes, there were situations when we had to lose a batsman or bowler due to an emergency call from a patient,” he says, adding, “During the rainy season, all of us would get calls from asthma patients while practising.”

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