Love-struck Irfan fan climbs tree to get a ''Jhalak''

New Delhi, Mar 27 (UNI) Watching a match from atop a tree may be a common sight in this cricket crazy country but Jhalak Kumari of Jamshedpur bothered little about the result of the India-England ODI and it was to get a glimpse of Irfan Pathan that prompted her to climb a tree just outside the Ferozeshah Kotla Stadium here today.

Trailing Irfan Pathan wherever he goes with the single point agenda of meeting and eventually marrying him, Jhalak did not have a ticket to enter the stadium and the Jamshedpur girl had no other option but to climb the tree, even though later a journalist gave her a pass to watch Pathan.

''I have been travelling to see him and I can't afford a ticket.

That left me with no other option but to climb the tree. Call me a tom boy but I don't mind,'' the rather frail looking girl told UNI.

Hoping to meet Pathan, she had gone to Vadodara but was disappointed to know that the seamer was in Delhi to play the one dayer.

''I took a train and reached here but I don't have the money to buy a ticket. Thankfully one of the journalists gave me a pass and I entered the stadium,'' she said.

Desperate to meet the pacer, the girl met chief selector Kiran More but could not manage pass for the Delhi one dayer.

''I saw Irfan in the India-Pakistan match in Jamshedpur and decided he was the man. I have also met him in Ahmedabad and requested him to give me passes of the matches he plays. But he ran out of tickets and could not help me,'' she recalled.

Asked what her parents thought about her infatuation, Jhalak was tightlipped.

''I won't say that. I'm going to Faridabad (for the second India-England) match as well, even though I don't know whether I can manage a ticket there or not,'' she said.

This is not the first time that Irfan Pathan has bowled over a maiden.

In 2004, a teenager from Ludhiana had fled from her home alongwith her younger sister, with a similar motto -- to meet and eventually marry the cricketer.

UNI AY DH BS1924