“Cricket to me was always a life long dream. Growing up in a village with little to no exposure to sports, I yearned to play cricket with a team. In our school days, we weren’t allowed to play cricket. Rather the only games we had were volley ball and atheletics. So we the village kids used to make do with whatever we had. We used palm seed as a ball and coconut stem as a bat to play cricket. Summer holidays were usually filled with days where we spent all our time in the ground with absolute disregard to the skin and the way it affected our skin. I have even had moments when I returned to school and people found it hard to recognise me. I had my first tryst with playing professional cricket in college. But here too, we weren’t given the proper equipment. We used to wear dilapidated knee pads and the entire team used to share one bat. And coming to Chennai for work, I found my troupe. We are a team of people who come to play cricket on every weekend. We have teams between us and we play with scores. The kinship we develop here is incomparable. Sports and such are not given much importance in government schools and even when they do, they are not able to provide for the entire school. I wish more government schools adopt a healthy approach to sports and encourage aspiring talent to come up.”