Anil Kumble circle, Gavaskar pool and house on 10, Dulka Road

Indian Test cricketers have seldom lent their names to cricket grounds in India - though stands, ends, and pavilions have been named after them, as have been awards and tournaments. At the same time, they have influenced an assortment of names of objects around the world. The list is long and probably more diverse than one would think...

Roads

It is not unexpected for Indian roads or landmarks to be named after Indian cricketers. There is an Anil Kumble Circle in Bengaluru as well as an Anil Kumble Road in Kumbla Town (also spelled as Kumble Town), Kerala, where the great man has ancestral roots. There is also a Dilip Sardesai Chowk in Mumbai. What is interesting is the mark they seem to have made in cities far away from their birthplaces. There is a Gavaskar Place and a Kapil Grove in Khandallah, Wellington, New Zealand-but then, the streets in Khandallah are named after Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, Gaya, Ganges, Kohima, and so on. There is also a Ravi Street and a Shastri Terrace in Khandallah, though they may not have cricketing connections.

In nearby Australia, in the City of Melton on the 'western ruralurban fringe' of Melbourne, there is a Tendulkar Drive, a Kohli Crescent and a Dev Terrace.

Cricket grounds

Two oceans away, in a land where cricket is still strives to seek acknowledgement, there is a Sunil Gavaskar Cricket Field in Louisville, Kentucky, a Sunil Gavaskar Cricket Stadium in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and a Sunil Gavaskar Ground in Leicester, England.

Prison block

Delhi's Tihar Jail, the largest prison complex in Asia, had named one of their blocks after local cricketing hero Manoj Prabhakar. The authorities changed the name of the block in 2001 after Prabhakar was named in the match-fixing scandals the year before.

Pool

Not the water body. When the Under-19 World Cup was revived in 1998, the sixteen teams were split into four pools for the preliminary round. Hosts South Africa, India, Kenya and Scotland were in the Gavaskar Pool. The other teams were in pools named after Don Bradman, Colin Cowdrey and Garry Sobers.

Racehorses

That racehorses have exotic names is well known but not many are named after cricketers. Still, racing historian John Randall has compiled a reasonably long list. Tendulkar came third in the 2001 Dewhurst Stakes in Newmarket, while one Bishan Bedi won several races at Dundalk. Both were trained by Adrian O'Brien.

A dismissal

India were playing an Australian XI in Sydney on their first tour after 1947. At the non-striker's end, Bill Brown took a couple of steps outside the crease before Vinoo Mankad released the ball, and the latter warned him. When Brown repeated the offence, Mankad ran him out. Three days later, Brown pulled off the same stunt in another tour match in Brisbane. Mankad warned him again, but let him go this time.

Then, in a Test match in Sydney, Mankad ran Brown-once again outside the crease at the non-striker's end-out without a warning. Brown found little sympathy; the Australian press generally sided with Mankad, as did Brown's captain, Don Bradman. Years later, this legal mode of dismissal by a bowler came to be known, unofficially, as Mankading, something Mankad's family never liked. By the 1960s, the term had stuck.

A mango

Horticulturist Haji Kaleemullah Khan of Malihabad, Uttar Pradesh, develops new varieties of fruits, particularly mangoes which he names after well-known Indians. That has earned him both the Padma Shri and the moniker 'Mango Man'. He famously grew over three hundred varieties of mango on the same tree. In 2010, he named a new hybrid mango-a cross between gudshah and chausa-and named it after Sachin Tendulkar.

A spider

While pursuing a PhD in spider taxonomy at the Gujarat Ecological Education & Research Foundation, Dhruv Prajapati discovered two new species of spiders of the 'Indomarengo and Marengo genus of Asian jumping spiders'. He promptly decided to name one of these two species Marengo sachintendulkar, after his favourite cricketer.

Food and beverages

The 'Dravid rasam' at Cafe Mysore, Mumbai, may not officially be on the menu, but the Feral Brewing Company in Australia does have a Mango Ganguly-'a Mango lassi IPA ... packed with fresh mango, spicy cardamom, lactose and dry hopped with an assortment of American and New Zealand hops'-on offer. While it is common practice for cricketers-turned-restauranteurs to name the restaurants after themselves, the Dhoni & Kohli Restaurant in Kandivali, Mumbai, is owned by neither.

Honourable mention: Also a road, but...

In 2001, one Tom Gueterbock wanted to sell his GBP 495,000 house in the South London district. There is nothing unusual about that... only the fact that he requested the Wisden website to publicize the sale. It would help him attract Indians as clients, he thought. The house on 10, Dulka Road is perhaps the closest one can get to living in a place that sounds like 'Tendulkar'.

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Reproduced with permission from Great Indian Cricket Circus by Joy Bhattacharjya and Abhishek Mukherjee and published by HarperCollins Publishers India.