Ishant’s family ready with 'dhol'

NEW DELHI: As the Indian cricket team returns from Australia after a historic win over the Kangaroos, the narrow lanes of Old Ranjit Nagar in Karol Bagh are abuzz with plans of a grand welcome for their star - and undoubtedly the star of the tour - local boy Ishant Sharma.

Bags full of flowers and loads of firecrackers have been stacked in the drawing room of Ishant’s house.

The room, filled with posters and newspaper cuttings of Ishant, is proof of the pride the Sharmas take in their son’s success at the tender age of 19. “Everyone in the vicinity has been repeatedly asking us, when Ishant would come?

We can’t express our happiness in words. When I walk in the streets, people look at me and say, ‘That’s Ishant’s father’, and tell me that my son was the star of the tour, what else could I have ever asked for,” says Vijay Kumar Sharma. 

The family will receive Ishant at the airport when he arrives with the team on Thursday. “We will participate in the procession to the felicitation venue and then bring him home. Dhol bajakar uska swagat karenge,” says Vijay Kumar.