the luxuriant green richards town for a salubrious encouraging physical activity as much as anything else in the first floor apartment of a residential complex in the of that of the city is possibly the single largest collection of cricket books in bengaluru allowing its but understated owner to fuse the the physical vincent accountant education and a back service provider among other things vocation is a cricket freak by choice bitten by the bug in his teens more than four decades back he became to the sport even as he made rapid strides in his profession strides that took him to united states office of wipro for more than four years from 1994at the last his cricket collection ranging from tomes the history of the game to autobiographies stood a 778 the 61 year old chief officer of alabos bpo intention of allowing the to grow under his feet an aspiring player like in that era and later vincent s cricketing journey did nt pan out the way he might have envisioned so he fused playing with administration he ran friends cricket overseeing their climb up from the sixth division the state cricket association league to becoming third champions in 1982 he was of the club long before that his had appearance when he raised money through the of raffle so that his team could practice at the nearby indian gymkhana grounds where such legends of karnataka cricket as v subramanya erapalli bhagwat chandrasekhar gundappa viswanath his hero wowed the fans with their skills league matches it was from his maternal uncle that vincent picked the habit of reading almost a natural progression given his for cricket he to fill the lacuna in his uncle s collection which had no on the sport by beginning to buy books on own childlike enthusiasm he recalls the exact date he bought his book tiger s tale october 1975 vincent proclaims for a princely price 3 in days especially for a 17 year old my first hardbound acquisition sunny days mr gavaskar s first for astronomical rs 30 in 1976 by i was a regular browser at the premier book shop on road and mr ts shanbhag its owner informed me that mr gavaskar himself be at the shop to sign his books shockingly i went to shop after convincing my parents to part with that sum only two of us turned up to meet mr gavaskar using a bat shaped pen he signed the book i hoping someday to get it signed again he went about buying books a hobby took a more serious turn though vincent insists that