Until about a month ago nobody would have noticed the household in one of the quiet, middle-class areas of Chennai. Now you only have to ask anyone standing on the main road a fair distance away for 'Balaji's house' and you will be directed correctly. Children crowd outside the house just to get a glimpse of their hero.

There has been no rest for the paceman's family from the time he took 12 wickets in the Test series against Pakistan. But the excitement in the neighbourhood mounted from the moment the tall, dark Balaji hit a six off Shoaib Akhtar in the third One Day International at Peshawar and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf asked to meet him.

Balaji, the youngest of three siblings, was born on September 27, 1981, well past midnight. For astrological reasons, the boy had to have a name starting with the letter B. "That is why we decide to give him the name of Lord Balaji," says his mother.

"Unlike my daughters, and like all boys, he was extremely active," Mallika continues. "Don't ask me how the Sundays were! We didn't see him at home at all. He would be playing cricket all the time and sometimes breaking window panes.

"The neighbours would come and complain. But what could I do except scold him and ask him not to do it again? Luckily, he and his friends soon moved to a proper ground."

Mallika remembers how Balaji used to irritate her by bouncing a tennis ball off the wall, leaving marks on the paint. "I had to scold him all the time for that... Both of us parents would chant, enough of cricket, concentrate on your studies."

The sisters, Padmini and Vijayalakshmi, obeyed their parents, studied hard, and became engineers, Padmini in electronics and communications, Vijayalakshmi in computer science. But Balaji preferred cricket, which scared his parents.

When Balaji completed his tenth standard, one of his uncles, also named L Balaji and also a cricketer working for the state accountant general's office, saw great potential in him and took him under his wing.

The senior Balaji put the lad under a coach named -- you guessed it! -- Balaji!

"I would give all credit to him (uncle L Balaji) for what my son is now," Lakshmipathy says. "He convinced me that Balaji could be successful as a cricketer, and that he could make a career in cricket. From then on, Balaji has been under his care."

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