From no grounds to Ranji final: Kerala cricket's rise

Moments after Kerala sealed a historic maiden Ranji Trophy final berth, politicians, Mollywood stars, leading writers and renowned sportspersons rushed to their social media accounts to congratulate the team.

Even random social media accounts on X and Instagram posted memes and reels to celebrate a momentous sporting occasion in the history of the state, which came after 352 Ranji matches.

Before that, the meta stats of Jio Cinema, where the semi-final games were streaming live, showed a sudden spike in viewership for Kerala match against Gujarat — from 2.5 lakh to 6 lakh.

It felt normal because fandom has a direct link with the achievements of a team or an individual athlete.

But they hardly get to see the tears and hard work that often shape history. Kerala cricket too has a similar tale to tell.

It dates back to the mid 2000s. Until then, Kerala's tryst with top-level cricket has limited perimeter through Tinu Yohannan and S Sreesanth, while Malayalam dailies celebrated the state connection of Sunil Valson, Ajay Jadeja and Abey Kuruvilla.

Perhaps, the biggest cricketing event in the state to a point was the Pooja Knockouts conducted by the Tripunithura Cricket Club from 1950s, where some prominent players such as K Srikkanth and V B Chandrasekhar appeared sporadically.

But a few cricket officials under veteran administrator T C Mathew conducted a meeting in 2005 to bring in a transformation in the state's cricketing landscape.

"Our talent pool is limited compared to other teams like Mumbai, Delhi, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu etc. Kerala is actually picking the state squad from 14 districts, a squad of 15 and that makes around 220 players," Mathew, the former BCCI vice-president, told PTI.

"There is no standard in that. So I designed to have an academy in all the districts. That is where we need to find talent and train our coaches."

But that was an arduous task because the state hardly had any full-fledged cricketing infrastructure.

Mathew wanted to change that first.

"Our first aim was to build proper infrastructure. Now, we have 17 first-class grounds in the state and in 2005, we didn't have a single ground.

"We ensured that coaches get enrolled to training programmes of the BCCI and now I think we have more Level 1 coaches in Kerala than many other frontline states. We also have expert in-house curators," he said.

Former Kerala coach P Balachandran too underlined the growth in the cricketing facilities in the state over the last two decades.

"We get a lot of rain in Kerala. So, it is necessary to have indoor training centres, and now KCA (the state cricket association) has set up such places in all districts, so that the players can train irrespective of the weather," said Balachandran.

Another salient feature of Kerala's entry into mainstream cricket was the targeted effort to tap talent from schools and colleges.

"We wanted a cricket team in all schools and colleges in the state and made a coordinated effort with all the managements of the educational institutions. We sent almost 700 coaches to all these places to impart expert training.

"The result is now visible. Once cricketers came only from cities like Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Thalassery. But just take a look at this Kerala team, we have players from Kasargod, Kozhikode, Idukki, Alappuzha, Palakkad etc. There is a good spread," said Mathew.

Veteran coach Biju George emphasised on the need to continue the hard yards to keep the momentum going.

"Vinod Kumar (KCA president) is a very able administrator. He doesn't get in the way of proper cricket. He makes sure that the right coaches are there. He made the selector travel with the team," said George.

"So, there is a lot of accountability. The coaches have given absolute freedom to do whatever is right for the team. In turn, it has instilled belief in the players.

"Also, we should thank the Kerala Cricket Academy for keeping a good supply of quality players,” he added.

Mohammed Azharuddeen, who made a hundred in the semi-final against Gujarat to bag the player of the match award, agreed to that point.

"In fact, I have been playing alongside Salman Nizar from a very early age, and even at the KCA Academy. It has helped us create an understanding and brotherhood between us.

"We always had the belief in ourselves even when we lost top players like Sanju (Samson), Vishnu (Vinod) and Baba (Aparajith) to injuries," Azharuddeen added.

Belief, camaraderie and unity. It's the Kerala cricketing story. A lot more sequels will be added to it in future too.