Gujarat Lions’ young pacer Basil Thampi has been pretty impressive in the ongoing season of IPL. He plays for Kerala in domestic cricket and was bought by Gujarat Lions in the IPL auctions in February this year for an 85 lakhs.
Thampi got the wicket of Chris Gayle in Gujarat Lions’ last game against RCB on Tuesday. He considers it as the best moment of his life, especially because Gayle achieved the landmark of 10,000 runs in the same innings but Thampi sent him back with a great toe-crushing yorker.
The young pacer was picked by Gujarat due to his outstanding performance in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy for Kerala. He picked as much as 8 wickets in 5 games at an economy rate of 6.22. Dwayne Bravo feels that Thampi will be surely playing for India in the next couple of years.
Early life of Thampi
Thampi was born in Ernakulam, a district in Kochi in the state of Kerala, on September 11, 1993. He has played a lot of tennis ball cricket before playing professional cricket. In tennis ball cricket he learned the art of bowling consistent yorkers.
Basil played club cricket for Globetrotters in Chennai where he was spotted by Tinu Yohannan. The former India bowler saw him bowling to Murali Vijay, S Badrinath and Dinesh Karthik and impressed all.
Thampi also trained at the MRF Pace Academy in Chennai and the former Australian legend Glenn McGrath was impressed with him. McGrath advised the youngster to never compromise on his natural talent of bowling fast.
Because of some unavoidable circumstances, Thampi wanted to quit cricket and head to the middle-east in quest of earning money and support his family. He thanks his coach Prasad, C.M. Deepak from the Swantons cricket club and his former Kerala coach Tinu Yohannan for forcing him to carry on with the game.
First-class debut
Thampi finally made his Ranji Trophy debut for Kerala in December 2014. He was selected to play in the one-day and T20 games in the previous season when he made his first-class debut.
IPL call-up
Currently, the young lad is gaining the experience of playing along with players like Suresh Raina, Brendon McCullum, Irfan Pathan, and Praveen Kumar. This will help him to improve more as a fast bowler.
