Boos from the English crowd motivated me: Sreesanth

Indian paceman S Sreesanth has the English crowd to thank for his sparkling performance in the first England innings on Friday, with the temperamental bowler saying that the boos he got from the spectators fired him up.

Sreesanth, while bowling in his second spell, irked the crowd when he claimed to have caught Ian Bell but actually the ball had landed in his hand after one bounce.

At that time he had already dismissed Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen and went on to add the wicket of Matt Prior despite repeated chants of "cheat" from the crowd.

Seesanth (3/77) has made a comeback to the Test team in place of injured Zaheer Khan and wreaked havoc with his pace colleagues Praveen Kumar (3/45) and Ishant Sharma (3/66) in the cloudy conditions as India bowled England out for 221.

"You leave me alone and I might do something else but when you say I can't do it, I do my very best, indeed better than the best. Thanks to them (crowd) for cheering me up," said the fiery right-arm pacer.

Sreesanth credits his stint with Warwickshire last year for his improvement as a fast bowler.

"Those four months with Warwickshire really helped me. (Warwickshire coach) Allan Donald worked with me. I used to try and do a lot of things. I used to bowl out-swingers but he taught me to bring the ball in. A few little things like where to bowl, how to bowl, observe the stance of a batsman. Those 3-4 months in county cricket surely helped me," he said.

The Kerala speedster feels that he has now matured as a bowler.

"I just kept it simple. Since the wicket was doing it, I just had to hit the seam. It isn't as if I quickly learnt to bowl the English length. For a fast bowler, it is important to hit the right area right length," Sreesanth said.

Talking about dangerman Pietersen's wicket, Sreesanth said that he initially tried to fox the batsman with bouncers, which didn't work but was happy to get his wicket eventually.

"Pietersen is not exactly comfortable against bouncers. It was part of our plan. I first tried slower and then faster bouncers but both went for boundaries. It was still nice to get him out and thankfully, I had the last laugh at the end of the day," he said.

He also wasn't too upset that England managed to stage a recovery from a precarious position through the 73-run ninth-wicket stand between Stuart Broad (64) and Graeme Swann (28).

"We knew one partnership would surely come. Broad went after us and took his chances. There were couple of chances but he got away with it. It's good England is fighting and it should be a good game," Sreesanth said.

Sreesanth termed the Trent Bridge track as a bowler-friendly wicket.

"It's going to be a good wicket. It surely is swinging but the credit has to go to bowlers. If you bowl badly the batsmen will score runs."

First Published: Jul 30, 2011 10:26 IST