Colourful characters and men from Kochi who made sporting history

Did he really do it? Not again! What will happen to him now? It has been an amazing journey in sport for Kochi over the past 25 years. And cricketer S. Sreesanth – perhaps the city’s most colourful and often controversial star – frequently hit the headlines during this period.

The unpredictable fast bowler won the World Cup twice – the T20 in 2007 and the 50-over in 2011 – but he often courted controversy, which cut short what could have been a brilliant career. Sreesanth frequently got into trouble even as fans kept wondering what would happen to him next.

Long before that, the wonderful doors to world cricket and big dreams were opened by Tinu Yohannan, son of Asian Games long jump champion and Asian record-holder T.C. Yohannan, who became the first Kerala cricketer to play Test cricket in 2001 and later the ODIs too.

KOCHI HAD AN IPL TEAM TOO!

Kochi is also Kerala’s sports capital. The city even had an IPL team, Kochi Tuskers, in 2011, but the joy was short-lived as the team was terminated by the Indian cricket board, BCCI, the following year after allegations of breach of franchise agreement.

A FIFA WORLD CUP COMES TO KOCHI!

The city’s Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, once Kerala’s main venue for international cricket and football, often ran into trouble virtually stepping on each other’s toes, but has now firmly become a football oval and even hosted the FIFA Under-17 World Cup in 2017.

KOCHI, KERALA BLASTERS’ HOME

It is also home to Kerala Blasters FC, a three-time runner-up in football’s Indian Super League and the team with the biggest fan base in the league. The Blasters, who made their ISL debut in Kochi in late 2014, bring life to the Nehru Stadium and every road around it every season from October, with fans jumping and roaring in celebration, which virtually sees the stands trembling.

AND THEN CAME THE SUPER LEAGUE!

Football’s huge popularity saw fans asking for more. That led to the birth of Super League Kerala (SLK) last year, the only State league in the country which allows foreign players. The league has now become hugely popular, and recently, Sports.com, a part of the USA-based SEGG Media Group, signed a ₹100-crore five-year contract with SLK for global live-streaming rights.

ERNAKULAM’S MOST VALUABLE PLAYER

Many prominent stars have come up in Kochi, and if one looks at the quarter-century that is passing by, hockey goalkeeper P.R. Sreejesh will easily be Ernakulam’s most valuable sportsperson.

‘THE WALL OF INDIAN HOCKEY’

Who would have imagined that a hockey great would emerge from a humble farming family at Kizhakkambalam! Goalkeeper Sreejesh’s inspiring performances brought the country two Olympic bronze medals, in Tokyo 2021 and Paris 2024.

Sreejesh, who played in four Olympics from 2012 to 2024 and captained India in Rio 2016, also won the World Hockey Federation FIH’s Best Goalkeeper award thrice. No wonder, everybody calls him the ‘Great Wall of Indian Hockey’. He was honoured with the Padma Bhushan this year and the Padma Shri in 2017, and there’s even a road named after him near his home.

ELDHOSE PAUL MAKES HISTORY

With names like T.C. Yohanan, Suresh Babu, P.T. Usha, Shiny Wilson, and, more recently, M. Sreeshankar, Kerala has been the country’s leading State in athletics for a long time. It is no longer the power it used to be. Still, on the positive side, triple jumper Eldhose Paul’s Commonwealth Games gold (with a wind-aided 17.03m) in 2022, in Birmingham, is perhaps the finest performance by an Ernakulam athlete in the past 25 years. That was also the first gold by an Indian triple jumper at the Games. Paul had a magical 2022, for he also became the first Indian triple jumper to qualify for the final of the World Athletics Championships in the USA that same year, eventually finishing ninth (16.79m).

With Kothamangalam’s Mar Athanasius College throwing up top talent year after year, Ernakulam also saw the emergence of athletes like quarter-miler Anilda Thomas, who ran the 4x400m women’s relay at the 2016 Rio Olympics, Paris Olympics and Asian Games champion relay runner Muhammed Ajmal, and Asian marathon champion T. Gopi from the college. And then, there is coach T.P. Ouseph, who guided top stars like Anju Bobby George, Bobby Aloysius and Lekha Thomas during their early years in Thrissur’s Vimala College and who kept trying to create more stars from Kothamangalam and from his base in Perumbavoor.

KIRAN, THE NEW GEORGE!

Away from the track, Kerala has thrown up many internationals in badminton with names like H.S. Prannoy, George Thomas, U. Vimal Kumar, Sanave Thomas, V. Diju, Jaseel P. Ismail and Markose Bristow, to name a few. Kiran George, the former Commonwealth Games silver medallist George Thomas’ son, comes to mind as perhaps the best player to emerge from Kochi in the past 25 years or so. Kiran, who won a silver in the under-17 Asians a few years ago, rose to a career-high 34 in the BWF World singles rankings a few months ago, and one could be hearing more about this talent in the next few years.

STRONG SUPPORT OF SPONSORS

With public sector oil company BPCL anda private business house pumping in big money, volleyball has been thriving in Kochi over the past few years, a sport which had strong support from the Cochin Port Trust before that. BPCL, which had some outstanding performances at the national level a few years ago, has some of the country’s finest stars in its line-up, including Jerome Vineeth and the now-retired Tom Joseph and setter B. Anil, while the Muthoot Pappachan Group owns the star-studded Kochi Blue Spikers team which plays in the Prime Volleyball League and is also doing excellent work at the grassroots level.

And in basketball, how can one forget the outstanding and dramatic performances of the Customs and Central Excise stars, including Subash Shenoy and Eudrick Pereira, who lit up Kochi, the State and the national circuit for a few years.

Kochi is blessed with one of the country’s finest multi-sport training centres in the Regional Sports Centre, which has hosted World Masters badminton, Commonwealth handball and many international and national events, but the city needs to do more if it wants to make a bigger impact in the next few years.