The winding road down the Kottapuram junction leads to the St Mary’s Vizhinjam Football Ground, the first playing field of Sanju Samson in his hometown of Vizhinjam. Close to the ground, beside the beach, is the St Mary’s Church, a four-century-old church with a cappella of Mother Mary at its roof and a cross attached to its spire. The church, the fishing village’s heartbeat, is where the locals unfailingly gather for mass on Sunday.
“Faith is central to our existence. When we go to the sea, we believe Virgin Mary is with us, helping us through the rough winds,” Sanju’s grandfather Anthonis says. Capturing the essence of the locality, the more decorous name of the church is Our Lady of Good Voyage.
Faith wafts through the sea breeze in the fishing harbour, largely constituting Latin Catholics. Every house has a miniature altar of the Virgin Mary, or a painted portrait. The first set of dates they mark on the calendar is the festival week (perunal in local speak). “Wherever in the world, the parish members flock to the church. This time, it was between December 26 to January 4,” says Albert Joseph, who runs the errands in the church. The festivities include ganamela (orchestra belting popular chartbusters), nadakam (drama), and night-long fireworks.
The staunch faith of the town moulded Sanju’s ideals. “No one teaches faith here. It comes naturally,” Albert says. Sanju may have shifted to a different locality, though not far, they spot his car once in a while outside the church. His parents and brother, Sally, visit the shrine more often. “Every Sunday morning, Sanju and his parents used to visit the church. The children (Sanju and his brother) would attend the Sunday School (catechism classes). On the days of Kurisinte Vazhi (procession with the cross), the family would be in the front,” neighbour Benny Pereira would say.
In tune with his unassuming demeanour, Sanju wears his faith passionately, but with an understated dignity; there are no religious symbols inked on his body. In a rare show of faith, after hitting the winning runs against West Indies in Eden Gardens, he knelt, drew a cross and offered a silent prayer with folded palms.
When former cricketer and pundit Parthiv Patel asked him about the celebration, he said he wants to “keep it very private.” His voice still choking from the assault of emotions, he would say: “I’ve kept on doubting myself, kept on thinking, what if, what if, can I make it? But I kept on believing, and thanks to the Lord Almighty for actually blessing me today.”
He doesn’t seek unnecessary publicity for his charity either. Recently, he rebuilt the house of a destitute family in a nondescript village in Kannur in Northern Kerala. It was given small space in a popular newspaper. It came through a priest who knew Sanju and hailed from the same neighbourhood. In a short Instagram video on the church website, the priest, Johny Puthenveetil, says: “I just made a phone call to him and he is ready to help.” The Sanju Samson Foundation dispensed learning resources to hundreds of students of St Mary’s Higher Secondary School in Vizhinjam. The function rolled out without the nauseating hysteria of television cameras pushing for a byte from his mother.
The humility endears to the masses in his home state. He is relatable. When training in Kochi before the South Africa series, he would hail auto-rickshaws to ferry him from the ground to the hotel. He would casually walk into shops in Thiruvananthapuram. He is soft-spoken and without an air of conceit, or jaada, as they say in Kerala. He married his college sweetheart from a different faith. From the Vizhinjam Church, you could see the historic mosque, Muhiyudheen Juma Masjid, where those from other communities, too, offer their prayers during the festivals.
The locals staunchly believe that Virgin Mary doesn’t forsake her favourite children. When Sanju bats, the entire town offers their prayers. His grandfather always has a prayer on his lip, some of the more devout worshippers light candles in the church. Even when he went through a lean patch during the New Zealand series, the town was certain that he would come back and lived on a prayer. “He is working and has the blessings, it’s a matter of time,” Albert would say, as though prophetically.
For the prayers and blessings, Sanju did his bit too. He never cribbed or carped. He turned up for every net session, trained hard to erase the flaws, and worked on weight distribution that hampered his stroke-making. “He felt that he was getting ready [to play the ball] a little early. If you try to hit a ball, when you have a lot of weight on one leg… when you have equal weight on both legs, then your base is created. Obviously, your hands move faster,” batting coach Sitanshu Kotak revealed. The trigger movement was tweaked, in the sense that he triggered a second earlier than before, hence found himself in better positions.
It was an innings conceived in dreams. He transposed to the teenager who wowed Rahul Dravid during his trials with the Rajasthan Royals. All poise and stillness, grace and wits. Head coach Gautam Gambhir, too, was wowed on Sunday. “It was just a very, very normal cricketing shots and I never saw any muscling of the ball as well .That is the kind of talent he has,” he praises.
Back in the coastal town of Vizhinjam, the Sunday would have been akin to a perunal (festival), and they would consider his knock as another blessing.