World Cup mavericks: Sreesanth—antics, on field and on screen

Sreesanth wore his emotions on his sleeve. Maybe both sleeves. The pacer was known to get in the faces of the batters, even towering hulks like Matthew Hayden, and was often warned for his on-field antics. The most famous of these was the confrontation with South African pacer Andre Nel, where, after being taunted for not having enough courage, he stepped out and hit Nel for a six in a Test. And then twirled his bat and hips. Also, the infamous slap from Harbhajan Singh for apparently needling him after an IPL match.

He was, for a while, the wild child of Indian cricket and was even banned for life for his involvement in the 2013 spot-fixing scandal. The Supreme Court eventually set aside the ban in 2019 and he returned to the Kerala Ranji team in 2022. It was in the run-up to his comeback that Sreesanth took online mental conditioning classes from mind coach Tim Grover, the man who had earlier worked with basketball legends Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

As for World Cups, he played only the 2011 edition at home (he was part of the 2007 T20 World Cup), but got only two games. He was, however, part of the final and went wicketless in eight overs.

For all the drama he created on the field, his life off it has been equally entertaining. Most people know of his dancing skills, but he added acting to his resume in 2017, with the films Team 5 and Aksar 2. In 2019, he even got the ‘Best Villain’ honour at the Santosham Film Awards for his role in Kempe Gowda 2. “Didn’t many of my teammates always use to say that I was an actor?” he said in an interview to The Indian Express in 2022. “I think you need to be a good actor to get by in life. I am not talking about faking it. I mean not showing your vulnerability. I hate sympathy; I don’t want it in my life anymore. I don’t want to show it to anyone that I am down. That’s what I mean by acting.”

Sreesanth has also been part of several reality shows like Ek Khiladi Ek Haseena and was the runner-up in the 2018 season of Bigg Boss. He would regularly pick fights with other contestants and host Salman Khan joked that Sreesanth had threatened to leave the house 299 times.

He also contested elections as a BJP candidate in 2016, but lost to his Congress opponent V.S. Sivakumar by more than 11,000 votes. That, however, has not crushed his ambition. “I am a huge fan of [Shashi Tharoor] as a person who had stood by me,” he said in the same Express interview. “But I will defeat him in the elections in Thiruvananthapuram.”