Breaking furniture, records too!

The year 2018 was a very tough one for Sreeshankar, but 2019 promises to be an exciting one for the long-jumper as there are a number of events. Will Sreeshankar take us to a new world?

Published : Jan 24, 2019 20:03 IST

M. Sreeshankar acknowledges the crowd’s cheers after setting a national record in long jump at the 58th National open athletics championship in Bhubaneswar on September 27, 2018.
M. Sreeshankar acknowledges the crowd’s cheers after setting a national record in long jump at the 58th National open athletics championship in Bhubaneswar on September 27, 2018.
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M. Sreeshankar acknowledges the crowd’s cheers after setting a national record in long jump at the 58th National open athletics championship in Bhubaneswar on September 27, 2018.

As a little boy, M. Sreeshankar frequently used to run and jump on to the sofa in his house in Palakkad. And at nights, the bed was his jumping pit.

“He has broken the legs of our sofa and other furniture a few times,” says Bijimol as she smiles at her long jumper son at their home. “He must have been around seven then.”

And when he was just two, Sreeshankar often used to race to a temple, some 600m away from his house, whenever his dad S. Murali went for a walk in that area.

Well, it is all in the genes.

Murali is a former SAF Games triple jump silver medallist while his wife Bijimol, an 800m runner, won a similar medal at the Junior Asians. And now, after years of careful coaching, Murali has made his son Sreeshankar the world’s best junior long jumper.

A couple of months ago, at the Open Nationals in Bhubaneswar, Sreeshankar broke the men’s national record, pushing it to 8.20m, a feat that made the 19-year-old the world’s No. 1 this season.

And despite not having a World junior, Commonwealth Games or an Asian Games medal to his name, the youngster is one of India’s brightest faces in athletics. He belongs to an elite gang which includes javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra and quartermiler Hima Das, both World junior champions. And this is a group that has the potential to win independent India’s first-ever Olympic medal in athletics.

Unlike other ladies in this part of the world, Bijimol — a manager with the FCI — rarely gets to watch Malayalam serials or even go for movies.

“If I try to put a serial on TV, it will soon be changed to a sports channel… it could be any sport. If I tell them, ‘let’s go for a movie’, my daughter would want to go to the Fort maidan and play basketball there,” says Bijimol.

Surprisingly, for someone who appears very calm and composed, Sreeshankar is a huge fan of WWE wrestling.

“I watch it whenever I find time but since I go to the ground in the evenings, I always miss the fights,” says the youngster.

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M. Sreeshankar on his way to the gold at the 58th National open athletics championship in Bhubaneswar on September 27, 2018.
 

Sreeshankar was good at cricket in school.

“I was very interested in cricket earlier. I was a fast bowler and I used to play with my friends in school but I didn’t play any tournament,” says Sreeshankar.

“I used to like Brett Lee, Mitchell Starc, Shane Warne and of course, Sachin Tendulkar. I used to play cricket till the sixth standard and then all of us shifted to basketball.”

Murali virtually lives in a family colony and his brothers stay close by.

“I was the youngest at home and all my brothers were good at sport, either in sprints or in jumps, and my elder brother Haridas held the Calicut University 200m record for a long time,” says Murali. “And (the late) K. K. Premachandran, the 1982 Asian Games 400m silver medallist, lived close to our house.”

That meant that there would be a group of people from that colony going every evening to the Fort maidan. And almost always, Murali would take his family along.

The synthetic track, which came up near the Medical College in Palakkad two years ago, is now their regular haunt.

“Our MLA Shafi Parambil, who took the initiative to bring the synthetic track here, said he did it mainly for Sreeshankar,” says Murali. Sreeshankar used to travel frequently to Coimbatore for his jump sessions earlier and his sporting career took a huge leap forward with the arrival of the new track at home.

There is still a lot of work to be done at the ground, the sand in the jumping pit is often hot, hard and heavy and there is not a drop of water anywhere nearby to sprinkle over it. There was no place to store equipment, so Sreeshankar and his friends built a small room near the track to keep their hurdles and other training stuff.

READ: Putting herself on the path to glory

Whenever Murali and his family — his other child, Sreeshankar’s sister Sreeparvathy is a good long jumper but is now focusing on the heptathlon — go for training, they pack their car with cans of water and the vehicle’s boot is loaded with small hurdles and other athletics equipment.

Sreeshankar loves music, A. R. Rahman is his favourite, and he enjoys the fast numbers in Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi.

“He prefers Tamil numbers while Sreeparvathy loves Hindi songs. These days, he carries wireless speakers to the athletics track and plays Tamil songs a bit loudly. But as soon as he goes to the other end of the stadium, Parvathy would play Hindi songs,” says Bijimol.

A brilliant student and the teachers’ favourite at the Kendriya Vidyalaya where he did his schooling and at the Victoria College, Sreeshankar is a sort of role model for youngsters in Palakkad but the one person he has many squabbles with is his sister.

“He fights often but he is everything to me, he is very loving and caring brother too,” says Sreeparvathy. “And wherever I go, I’m known as Sreeshankar’s sister so I’m really proud of him. He has been the chief guest at some of my school functions too.” Sreeparvathy frequently helps out her dad as he searches the internet for the little things that could help Sreeshankar become a better athlete.

“I watch all events, even the marathon closely and the throws closely, trying to understand their movements, trying to see if it could help my son in some way,” says Murali.

A father-coach can be a great blessing.

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Sreeshankar with his sister Sreeparvathy, mother K. Bijimol and father, S. Murali. They all have athletics connections. Murali is also Sreeshankar’s coach.
 

“There is no strict training schedule for Sreeshankar, almost every day the training time changes, depending on how fresh he is after college. And the work-out patterns are done specifically for him, it changes day to day. No other coach can be as flexible as his dad,” says Bijimol.

The year 2018 was a very tough one for Sreeshankar, a year when he underwent a very complicated appendix surgery, that saw him miss the Commonwealth Games and did not give him enough time to prepare properly for the under-20 Worlds in Tampere (Finland) and the Jakarta Asiad.

2019 promises to be an exciting year and there are a number of events too.

Will Sreeshankar take us to a new world?

 

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