India has always portrayed a fair game when it comes to International Cricket. The evergreen Sachin Tendulkar and the classic Sunil Gavaskar have won many accolades for the country. But you cannot forget the young and emphatic newcomers who have shown some promising and commendable talent on the field – one of them being Lakshmipathy Balaji.
Born in Chennai (formerly known as Madras) on September 27th 1981 in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, Lakshmipathy Balaji showed a keen interest in the game of cricket from a tender age. He joined the Indian Cricket team as a right-arm fast-medium bowler in 2003. Before that he played cricket on a state-level. Lakshmipathy’s debut test match against New Zealand in Ahmedabad failed to garner him any recognition or success. Little did he know when he went for the Pakistan test match in 2004 that he would return a national hero.
He managed to scalp 12 wickets in three tests and became famous for his patent ball swinging, whippy deliveries, fast-paced yorkers, and confusing bouncers. The historic Indian victory in this tour led to the emergence of Lakshmipathy as a reliable and fast-pace bowler. India needed bowlers like Lakshmipathy due to the sheer lack of quality fast-bowlers missing on the Indian scene. Within no time, his open-chest fast bowling has earned him a loyal fan following and he is soon expected to be a part of India’s pace representation.
After nursing a terrible back injury for almost a year, Lakshmipathy Balaji was back to his ol’ swinging ways in the DLF Indian Premier League (IPL) 2008 where he was a part of the Chennai Super Kings. Here too, he demonstrated outstanding abilities when he managed to become the first bowler in the IPL to have made a hat-trick. In his first match against Delhi Daredevils, he bowled for four overs giving 35 runs and took two crucial wickets of Shoaib Malik and Gautam Gambhir. In his next match against Rajasthan Royals, Balaji again bowled 4 overs, gave 42 runs at an economy rate of 10.50