Gully boys: Rising from bylanes to the fast tracks
T Natarajan is the latest addition to the fascinating tales of pacers rising from tennis ball cricket
NEW DELHI: Growing up in the early eighties, Abey Kuruvilla’s days began at dawn at the Shell Colony in Mumbai. His six feet, five inches frame was still some years in the making and instead of a red leather ball in his hand, the fast bowler reveled with the tennis ball in his Chembur locality, a collection of lowermiddle class housing colonies known for their fierce tennis ball rivalries.
“It (tennis ball cricket) makes you street smart. You have specific goals and you have a very small margin of error,” says Kuruvilla, who rose from the eastern Mumbai suburb to make an impressive international debut as a right-arm pacer during India’s 1997 West Indies tour.
“I remember waking up at 4 o’clock and going out to play with my friends. On weekends, there would be more matches with some more time in hand. I have always loved tennis ball cricket. There is competition and there is love from the people who are watching it. You are a local champion.”
Kuruvilla played his first international match at the age of 29. Now, India has another fast-bowler on the rise who began his career as a local tennis ball hero and has made his debut for India at 29. Thangarasu Natarajan’s story is astounding and by now even a little well-worn. Rising out of the humblest of origins-tennis ball cricket to local club and straight to Ranji Trophy, then being scouted for the Tamil Nadu local T20 league-before a sensational IPL season for Sunrisers Hyderabad this year which immediately put him on the flight to Australia for Team India, where he made both his ODI and T20 debuts.
It is the unspoken ambition of perhaps every cricket loving child in India; transforming their tennis-ball gully cricket skills into the big league. In the documentary Zidane: A 21st Century portrait, the French WorldCup winning maestro spoke about how, when he played football in the streets as a child, he had a running commentary in his head, in the voice of one of the pre-eminent French commentators of his growing up years. How many of us have imagined commentary in our heads while running into bowl, a soft tennis ball compressed in our hands, within the confines of a narrow city lane?
It’s early days for Natarajan on the big stage of course (Kuruvilla himself played just 10 Tests and 25 ODIs in 1997, the only year he featured in the Indian team) but his story already has that delicious flavour of a childhood dream come true, partly because it is almost impossible to find examples of cricketers making the international cut without going through the age-group system.
“Usually everyone has to play U-19, U-16, U-23 and only then play Ranji Trophy. I played in Ranji Trophy directly,” Natarajan said. “I started playing tennis ball cricket when I was in 5th grade. I came to know what a cricket ball is like only when I turned 20. I think that was in 2011 (when) I played in Chennai Division 4. I didn’t have money to travel if I was called to training suddenly. Whichever team I played used to sponsor my shoes. I tried to make them (shoes) last the year.”
Only Pakistan can boast of a stellar line of fast bowlers emerging from tape-ball cricket-where a tape is wound around a tennis ball to give it heft and a seam-starting from the eighties, the thriving urban culture of tape ball tournaments produced bowlers like Wasim Akram, Shoaib Akhtar and Umar Gul.
“Before I played for Pakistan in 1984, I was a professional tennis ball cricket player,” Akram had said in a media interaction in 2018. “I used to be paid Pakistan ₹20 per game. That was a lot of money at that time and so if I played 10 games in a month, I could easily make ₹200. I learnt a lot by playing tennis ball cricket on the streets and on the terrace.”
Australia pace great Jason Gillespie said it only shows the surprise element that Indian cricket produces often.
“If anything is organised (in Australia) it is proper cricket ball, whether it be school cricket or lower-level club cricket. Tennis ball cricket tends to be played on the beach or the backyard, unstructured, just a few mates getting together for a barbecue and playing,” said Gillespie, who is commentating on the India-Australia series on the Sony network.
“He (Natarajan) looks an impressive young bowler,” he said. “We are seeing more and more young fast bowlers making a mark in Indian cricket which is a big tick to whatever process they are following.”
Street lessons
“When I practice my yorkers with the cricket ball, I can only do it with a batsman. I just cannot practice with a cone or a shoe as a target. If a batsman is there then I can bowl six yorkers out of six balls. I don’t have a big secret. It’s only bowling with tennis balls,” Natarajan said, analysing his own bowling in a video released by SRH during the IPL.
Kuruvilla expanded on the nuances of what success with a tennis ball entails.
“Tennis ball cricket is mostly played in short formats like eight or six overs. The boundaries are short. There is little technique involved compared to leather ball cricket. Your aim is to only prevent a boundary or six. That’s why bowlers who play in those formats have good slower balls and yorkers. Even the batsmen who play in tennis ball cricket are good runners. It helps your game reading,” Kuruvilla said.
As anyone who has played tennis ball tournaments would testify, it’s also intensely competitive.
“I played tennis ball cricket for two seasons even after getting selected for the Mumbai Ranji Trophy team (in 1990-91 season). There is huge competition involved which you love. Also, if you don’t win, you don’t earn. But that is secondary. It’s mostly the love for the game that keeps tennis ball cricket running,” the 52-year-old former national selector said.
“There are several professional tennis ball cricket players in India and there are tournaments not just here but in Muscat and Dubai too.”
Tennis ball cricket tournaments are organised throughout the country at a local level and several India players, including MS Dhoni, played in them in their younger days. Played at an amateur level, it can involve cash prize as well as cricket kits as awards; like Akram, those earnings were critical for Natarajan.
“I saved money from local tournaments to be able to buy something important and also to go somewhere,” said Natarajan.
Despite its charms, there is a trade-off to be made for cricketers who can successfully transition from tennis ball to leather ball. “I would say, once you start playing leather ball cricket you should leave tennis ball. The difference in weight of the ball can create problems for a bowler,” said Kuruvilla.
It’s something Natarajan understands. With the money that he won from tennis ball cricket, he made turf wickets in his village, the first of its kind, so locals can have the chance to make the change to real cricket balls. There are some players from his facility who have already made it to the Tamil Nadu Premier League.
As much as a tennis ball made his cricket career possible, making a late transition to a real cricket ball was fraught with challenges for Natarajan. After he graduated to club cricket, he got his first call up to the Ranji squad in 2015, where he was soon reported for suspect action and suspended.
“I will never forget that my entire life. I struggled for a year after that. It was really hard to correct the action and make a comeback. If people encourage and motivate me, I like it and it helps boost my confidence. That’s the kind of person I am. When I came to play in the TNPL after my comeback is when people came to know who Natarajan is. That’s the year I was bought by (Kings XI) Punjab in the (IPL) auction (2017 for ₹3 crore). The next year I had an elbow surgery. I was feeling miserable when SRH bought me (in 2018 for ₹40 lakh),” Natarajan said.
It was not until the 2020 IPL where he finished with 16 wickets from as many games, bowling those pin-point yorkers he learnt to bowl in tennis ball tournaments, that Natarajan’s transformation was complete.