Savithri Devi grins, remembering how her four-year-old son used to keep pestering the village rubber tappers in Kakkoor, to make him balls with waste rubber strips. ‘‘He would wait for me to return from office, make me hold the cricket bat his father would make from coconut leaf spine, and keep bowling to me. I remember how we laughed at him when he told us one morning that he had dreamt he was playing for India with Sachin Tendulkar. He was barely ten then,’’ remembers the mother of S Sreesanth, the lone new face in the Indian cricket squad for the one-day series against Sri Lanka.At their Kochi home, Devi, who works at the local government sub-treasury, and her husband V Santhakumaran Nair, a retired LIC official, are still to get used to cameras and reporters—and the fact that their son is the biggest thing to happen to Kerala cricket after Tinu Yohannan dazzled, only to let down. Incidentally, Tinu and Sreeshanth went to the same school and were even bowling partners.Sreesanth is also known locally as a good break dancer—he recently won a national-level break dance contest here—and is a painter and singer of some talent as well.But he is already preparing to look beyond the cricket stadia and the dance floors, when the time comes. A brilliant student, he is chasing a degree in psychology. ‘‘He is keen to be a sports psychologist. He reads up everything he can get hold of on that area, whenever he can,’’ says his father. But for the moment, it is all cricket for Sreeshanth as Kerala waits to cheer its new kid on the block.
