Speedster Sreesanth, who was serving a ban for the last seven years because of a spot-fixing controversy, returned to competitive cricket this week to play the T20 Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy for Kerala.
In his second outing of the series, the 37-year-old was playing Mumbai and a little incident involving him and young Yashasvi Jaiswal has caught the internet’s attention.
It was the fifth over of Mumbai’s innings when Sreesanth was given his third over. Young Yashasvi Jaiswal was at the crease and tried to swing big for a six but the ball beat his bat and went straight to the keeper. Sreesanth completed his follow-through and walked all the way to the other end of the pitch and shared down Jaiswal.
The 19-year-old batter replied with his bat, hitting Sreesanth for back-to-back sixes and then a boundary to take Mumbai from 39/0 to 57/0 within an over.
Sreesanth has so far played two matches since making his comeback to Indian cricket. He bagged one wicket for 29 runs in four overs at an economy rate of 7.25 as the Sanju Samson-led Kerala beat Puducherry by six wickets in the first match. He went wicketless against Mumbai.
The fast bowler was a regular in the Indian team and was part of the team that won the 2007 T20 World Cup and the 50-over World Cup in 2011 at the Wankhede Stadium, where he returned to competitive cricket on Monday.
"God is great. My faith in god has given me this opportunity to comeback for the Kerala team. I am physically fitter than I was in 2011 when we won the World Cup. I am expecting to perform well and the team has both experienced hands like Robin Uthappa, Jalaj Saxena, Sachin Baby, captain Sanju Samson, as well as young players like KM Asif," Sree Santh told IANS over telephone from Mumbai.
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