Karnataka players eager to win T20 Blind Cricket WC title for India

Falah Faisal | NT

Bengaluru:

The T20 World Cup which was watched by millions has recently concluded. But another world cup is about to get underway. No, not the FIFA World Cup but the third T20 World Cup Cricket for the Blind, and has won the last two world cups the pressure is on the Indian team to defend their title. For this, they have been rigorously training in Anekal near Bengaluru, and this time three players from Karnataka feature in the squad.

They are Prakash Jayaramaiah, Lokesha, and Sunil Ramesh and News Trail interviewed them in the middle of the training session. Prakash Jayaramaiah is the team’s wicketkeeper and batsman. He says the wicketkeeper has the most important role in Blind Cricket, he explains, “A keeper has to tell the bowler where to ball, set the field based on the batsmen’s strengths and weakness and depending on where the batsmen hit the ball calling out to the fielder closest to where it is going.”

Prakash lost sight at the age of 8, despite that he was enamored by the game in school and started playing for the Indian team in 2010. He has since participated in four World Cups and was the highest scorer in the final the last time India lifted the trophy. “India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are the strongest teams in Blind Cricket. When we played Pakistan in the semifinal in South Africa I scored 28 runs from 28 balls and won the match with 2 balls to spare and was 99 not out in the final of the 2nd T20 World Cup at Chinnaswamy Stadium.

Pakistan has even come out saying that they are afraid to play when I am in the team,” says Prakash. Lokesha is one of the best fielders in world cricket right now and has been part of the national team since 2016. An unfortunate incident in his childhood cost Lokesha the vision of his right eye and this will be his first World Cup, having played in the Asia Cup before.

“It is definitely a happy moment because I missed the last two World Cups and now I finally have a chance to prove myself. We have been practicing really hard for the last 15 days,” says Lokesha who has been associated with Samarthanam since 2009. The third player Sunil Ramesh is playing in his second T20 World Cup, he says “I had scored 93 in the final the last time India won. We train from morning 6 am to evening 6 pm. We want to make the country proud.”