Madhavrao Laxmanrao Apte was an Indian cricketer who played in seven Tests from 1952 to 1953. He was elected to the office of the president of the Cricket Club of India in 1989. He afterwards served as the president of the Club's Legend's Club and was the chairman of his family's company, Apte Group. His brother Arvind Apte was also a cricketer. He is a former Sheriff of Mumbai.
Apte, although a right-hand batsman by trade, began his career in 1948 as a leg spinbowler under the coaching of Vinoo Mankad while he was a student at Elphinstone College. In 1951, at the age of 19, he made his first-class debut playing for Indian Universities against the touring Marylebone Cricket Club. In 1952, at the age of 20, he played his first Ranji trophy against the Saurashtra cricket team after Vijay Merchant dropped out due to injuries. That same year, he was selected as a replacement to the Bombay team after Pankaj Roy, and made his national cricket debut against the Pakistan team that season. He also played one season for the Bengal cricket team. In 1953, Apte was selected for India's tour to West Indies, where at Port-of-Spain, he finished as the second highest scorer for India after Polly Umrigar. He played in only one first-class match in 1954, after which he was never selected on the national Indian team again. He maintains that his being dropped was "an unsolved mystery". Later on, in his autobiography, he states that soon after his run inthe West Indies, his father was approached by chief selector Lala Amarnath for a share of the New Delhi base of their family's business, Kohinoor Mills. After his father politely declined the selector, Apte was never selected to represent India again. He joined his family's business and officially retired from international cricket at the age of 34, although he continued to play first class cricket. His last first-class game was the 1967-68 Ranji Trophy final between Bombay and Madras. Apte is the only cricket player to have played alongside D. B. Deodhar and Sachin Tendulkar. In 1989, he became the president of the Cricket Club of India and awarded Tendulkar playing membership, and in 2016, argued that the Cricket Club of India was a founding member of the Board of Control for Cricket in India after the controversial Lodha Committee report proposed to consign the Club as an associate member of the Board, and thus taking away the voting rights of the former's members as part of the reformation process at the latter. He was the president of the Club's Legends Club, and in 2014, urged the Club to make the Anandji Dossa reference library available to the public. In December 1983, Apte was selected to become the Sheriff of Mumbai. In 2011, he inaugurated the 26th Sportstar Trophy. In 2015, at the age of 82, he published his autobiography titled As Luck Would Have It at Wankhede Stadium at the hands of Sunil Gavaskar. In business, Apte served as the president of the Mumbai Chamber of Commerce. He served as the chairman of the Apte Group.
