Kerala   

Eyes glued to television screens, they cheered him

At around half past three on Tuesday afternoon, a collective roar of delight was heard in the drawing rooms of hundreds of thousands of houses in Kerala. S. Sreesanth had just yorked Dilhara Lokuhettige at the VCA Stadium in distant Nagpur. In his next over, the 22-year-old pace bowler from Kochi had Muttiah Muralitharan caught at mid-off by Murali Kartik as India crushed Sri Lanka in the first of the seven-game one-day series. Tea tasted particularly sweet on Tuesday evening for Malayalis.

For a State which has given India P. T. Usha, Jimmy George, I.M. Vijayan and Anju George, success on the sporting field is nothing new, but its contribution to cricket - the country's magnificent obsession - has been nothing to write home about. In fact, Sreesanth is only the second cricketer from Kerala to don the Indian colours. So just to see him come charging in on the television set, at the beginning of the Lankan innings, was itself a happy moment for Keralites. To see him pick up two wickets on debut on a pitch not exactly tailor-made for pace bowling made everyone happier.

""Sreesanth has done all of us proud,"' says Vipin Lal, who has played along with him for Kerala in the Under-22 and 19 tournaments. He is an inspiration for many young cricketers like us in Kerala."

P.T. Usha couldn't watch Sreesanth in action either, as she is in Bhubaneswar as a special guest at the on-going All-India Inter-Railways Athletics Meet. "It's nice to see a youngster from Kerala doing well in a sport in which we don't have a strong tradition," she says.

K.T. Sindhu, a housewife and cricket fan, did see Sreesanth's moment of glory on the television set in her home at Thamarassery.

"And I felt so proud," she says.

P.K. AJITH KUMAR

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