Nation Focuses on India’s T20 Blind Women’s Cricket Captain’s Small House

Anantapur: A small house in the tiny Tambalahatti hamlet in Satya Sai district of AP, just 100 metres from the Karnataka border, came under national attention on Friday, as T.C. Deepika, captain of India’s team that won the T20 Blind Women’s Cricket World Cup, hails from this village.

Cricket fans and national media reached this village to congratulate Deepika’s parents. They found that a major portion of the small house in which Deepika lives with her parents had been taken over by medals and shields received by Deepika after she started her cricket career a decade ago.

Deepika’s parents Chikka Rangappa and Chittamma work as farm labourers in Tambalahatti, living in the small house sanctioned to them by the government in 2006. The couple let their girl continue her career in cricket from the village to district, state, country and international level. Deepika has received around 100 medals and shields. Her parents have accommodated all these shields in their small house and preserve them with care.

Deepika’s mother Chittamma says, “The medals and shields won by Deepika are a part of our family. We preserve them even when our house leaks during the rainy season,” she proudly pointed out.

Interestingly, the tiny village in AP has people who mostly speak Kannada. In view of this, AP government runs a Kannada medium school. There is, however, an Anganwadi centre where Telugu is taught. Deepika too went through the Anganwadi and the Kannada school, before cricket became her life’s ambition.