The multinational soft drink giant will be at the home of Karnataka cricket for at least five years in a bid to boost grassroots level cricket in the State.

``This is the nursery of Indian cricket,'' said Samuel George of the sponsors. ``Earlier there were Test stars like GR Vishwanath, Brijesh Patel, Syed Kirmani, BS Chandrashekar, EAS Prasanna and Roger Binny. If that was the golden age, so is this era, with Anil Kumble, Javagal Srinath, Venkatesh Prasad, Rahul Dravid and Sunil Joshi doing the nation proud.

``We are confident that there are many more potential stars at the junior level just waiting to be discovered. That is the reason we chose to tie up with Karnataka.''

He added this was the first tie-up they were entering towards the long term development of cricket. Elsewhere in the world Coke had set up FIFA socceracademies, but this was a first with cricket.

Amit Jain, also representing the sponsors, stated they would infuse innovative cricket promotional methods even in district level cricket in places like Mysore, Mangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga.

Although Coke was not sponsoring the state Ranji Trophy team (that is being done by BPL), they would use various attractions to bring in spectators to even Ranji Trophy games.

The tie-up would cover KSCA's zonal tournaments, Inter-Collegiate, Diamond Jubilee (junior), Under-16 and Under-19 (All India and Board), Under-14 and Under-22 (South Zone), Safi Darashah, SA Srinivasan Memorial, State League Group 1 (1st to 5th division), District and Bangalore 1st division tournament and BT Ramaiah Inter-school tournament.

The secretary of KSCA, Brijesh Patel, hoped cricket, which was a passion in India, would be further boosted by some of the promotional methods the sponsors were to bring in. The onward path of vertical growth would help players, umpires, spectators and theentire cricketing fraternity, he said.

Both Javagal Srinath and Anil Kumble who were present at the signing of the agreement expressed their happiness at the manner in which the multi-national had gone about the deal. ``If they were really looking for mileage they would have gone for the Ranji Trophy team,'' they stated. ``They really have the long term promotion of the sport at heart.''

The deal with Coke is worth Rs 1.5 crore over five years with an escalation cost built into it.

``We would have this sort of a tie-up with other associations only after studying how it works in Karnataka. We are in the sport and in India for a long time to come. We want to ensure that the tie-up is most beneficial to both parties,'' said Jain.