Kerala   

It is her dream to bat like Dravid

Like many girls in Kerala, E. Rensy loves watching Rahul Dravid bat.

But unlike most of them, she wants to bat like him.

"He has always been my favourite cricketer," says Rensy, who will lead Kerala in the South Zone junior girls' cricket championship, commencing at Anantapur, Andhra, on April 29. She's captaining the State in this tournament for the second year in a row.

"We have a good team this time around," says the 19-year-old. "We do expect to do well in the tournament. There was a larger pool of talents to choose this Kerala side from - many girls had come for the selection trials after reading about them in the newspapers."

It was after reading one such report, years ago, that Rensy became a cricketer. "There was one small paragraph in the local page of a Mayalalam daily about selecting the Kozhikode District team. I must've been around 12," recalls the B.Sc. second year chemistry student at the Malabar Christian College (MCC), Kozhikode. "I had started playing cricket long before that though, with my brother and other boys in our neighbourhood at Vengeri."

Rensy, who bats at one drop and bowls off-spinners, is happy that more girls are playing in Kerala these days. "I hope S. Sreesanth's success in international cricket would inspire a few girls also to take up the sport. And It's good to see that women's cricket is shaping up well in Kozhikode, thanks, mainly, to the hard work of Haridas, our coach at MCC."

She, however, feels that the sport has not received the attention it deserves in Kerala.

"The main problem is lack of sponsorship. And the game should be spread across the State; right now, we have players mostly from a few districts, such as Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Malappuram, Palakkad and Kannur. That should change."

P. K. AJITH KUMAR

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