Few would believe that limited over cricket had its begining in the past while royal town of Thirupanithura, in Kerala, the southern most state in India. The Pooja Tournament as it was then called began in 1951 and was organised by the then Princes club. Cricket was then traditionaly a longer duration game than the now popular instant version. The factors that prompted the club, and the father of Kerala cricket (if one could call him so), the late Sri. K.V. Kelappan Thomas to device this one day format was the waning interest the local two day games that often ended as dull draws.

The Pooja Cricket Tournament was then conducted on matting wickets at the small picturesque Palace Oval, the tournament attracted the best cricketers of the country to the oval.

G.R. Viswanath, B.S. Chandrasekar, M.L. Jaisimha, Brijesh Patel, Shivlal Yadav, Mohammad Azharuddin, Robin Singh, Anil Kumble, Venkatesh Prasad, W.V. Raman, K. Srikkanth, Kiran More, L. Sivaramakrishnan, S. Viswanath, Pankaj Dharmani, Sudhir Naik are just some of those cricketers who have played in this Tournament during these years.

The Palace Oval has also been graced by some 'greats' of the game like Col C.K. Nayudu, Vijay Merchant, V.V. Kumar, Fateh Rao Singh Gaekwad during the Tournament days.

The Tournament has enjoyed an unbroken success for 48 years. Now for the last seven years the Tournament has been sponsored by the India Cements Ltd., Chennai, and has been christened the Sankar Cement All India Pooja Cricket Tournament.

This is the only Tournament in Kerala to be held on turf wickets and now attractive prize money is offered to the teams.

This year's event conducted in two phases has attracted 22 teams from the state and seven leading teams from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. One qualifier from phase I was seeded into the main phase where the teams from outside the state are seeded.

This Tournament that really set the game rolling in the State is now set to move on to its 50th year.