COIMBATORE: The Indian Premier League is home to numerous rags-to-riches stories. It has seen nondescript players gain instant recognition. It has also seen many fade away quickly. Then there are the likes of T Natrajan (29) from Chinnappampatti, a village on the outskirts of Salem.
Six years ago, Natarajan was just another youth playing tennis-ball cricket.
The eldest of five siblings, Natarajan’s father was a daily-wage labourer in a textile mill. His mother was running a roadside food stall, when Natarajan moved to Chennai after being spotted by his coach A Jayaprakash.
During the 2016 TNPL, Natarajan caught everyone’s eye. IPL scouts came calling, and in 2017 he was bought by Kings XI Punjab for Rs 3 crore – the highest for an uncapped India player at the IPL auctions. Natarajan used the money to give his three sisters quality education and constructed a house for his parents.
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But he didn’t stop there. The fast bowler with help of his friends now runs an academy in his village, which handpicks rural players and gives them quality coaching free of cost. The Natarajan Cricket Academy at Chinnappampatti trains around 60 players. Among them, 30 to 40 players regularly turn up for daily coaching.
From 7 am to 7 pm daily, the academy located in a half-acre land belonging to K Krishnakumar, who is also a friend of Natarajan, sees a number of players doing net practice.
“The sole purpose of starting an academy was to create many Natarajans, who lack basic opportunities,” head coach N Prakash (36) told The New Indian Express. The academy has already unearthed a gem in G Periyasamy. Like Natrajan, Periyasamy also spent his days playing tennis-ball cricket.
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With cricket taking him nowhere, he was resigned to finding the odd job to support his family until one day, Natarajan and Jayaprakash showed up at his residence.
Apart from investing Rs 10 lakh on the half-acre land, which was earlier an agricultural land, Natarajan also supplies kits to the players who train at his academy. Jayaprakash reiterates they are not here to generate revenue but only to spot the talent among rural youth and offer them a platform to excel.