T20 World Cup 2024: Know All About Saurabh Netravalkar Who Troubled Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma In India vs USA Match

In an interview with News 18’s Cricket Next, Saurabh’s sister Nidhi said, “We are supporting India. We want India to win the World Cup, and we are confident they have a good chance. That’s also what we had hoped for in the ODI World Cup. We were born and brought up here, and we love Indian cricket. We definitely want India to win not just this match but the World Cup, but we also want him to perform well. So, yeah. It is a dilemma for us.”

Saurabh has played cricket for the India Under-19 team and is a close friend star batter Suryakumar Yadav. Days before the World Cup began, screenshot of Netravalkar’s LinkedIn profile started circling the internet as the cricketer is a software engineer. (Hardik Pandya Witnesses Rise In ICC Rankings, Shakib Al Hasan Dethroned From Top Spot By Mohammad Nabi)

Netravalkar, a key seamer for India in the 2010 U19 World Cup, shared the field with future Test stars like KL Rahul, Mayank Agarwal, and Jaydev Unadkat. While his teammates went on to shine in the IPL and dream of donning the Indian national team jersey, Netravalkar’s journey took a different path. Despite making his first-class debut for Mumbai in December 2013, this match remained his only appearance at that level.

Balancing his love for coding with his dedication to perfecting his swing bowling proved increasingly challenging. Ultimately, Netravalkar made the difficult decision to pursue a career in engineering, stepping away from his cricketing aspirations. 

“In 2015, I moved to the US primarily to do my Masters in computer science. I had no clue that I’d be playing cricket here,” said the left-arm fast bowler who didn’t even carry his bowling shoes then.

It changed only when he started to play club cricket in California. “There used to be club-level college cricket there. So I played that for fun,” the 32-year-old said.

“I used to work five days a week, train at night in the indoors, and maybe drive to LA. It’s a six-hour drive to LA. And LA was one of the few places at that time that had a proper turf pitch. I wanted to make use of that opportunity and play in LA. In the US, there are long weekends where Fridays or Mondays are off; that’s when we have these franchise-based T20 tournaments,” he said.