India beat home team USA at the ongoing T20 World Cup on Wednesday to reach the "super eight" round. With the high-profile match being a big trend on the Indian internet, with memes and posts galore, who was Indian-origin USA player Saurabh Netravalkar's family in Mumbai cheering for?
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." (Also Read: Saurabh Netravalkar's engineer colleagues still don't believe he plays T20 World Cup for USA: 'When I play vs India…')
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Talking more about Saurabh's cricket journey, Nidhi revealed how his parents would take him every day for coaching. "Our parents thought he'd understand that he wouldn't be selected. But he made it. And then it became like a thing for my parents only to take him from Malad to Churchgate every day for coaching. They did it with a lot of passion for six to seven years. He used to go to Churchgate after school, travel for one hour on the train and do all his homework and everything on the train. So, from the beginning, he has managed both his studies and his cricket, and that's how his journey began."
{{/usCountry}}Talking more about Saurabh's cricket journey, Nidhi revealed how his parents would take him every day for coaching. "Our parents thought he'd understand that he wouldn't be selected. But he made it. And then it became like a thing for my parents only to take him from Malad to Churchgate every day for coaching. They did it with a lot of passion for six to seven years. He used to go to Churchgate after school, travel for one hour on the train and do all his homework and everything on the train. So, from the beginning, he has managed both his studies and his cricket, and that's how his journey began."
{{/usCountry}}In 2010, he represented India in the Under-19 World Cup. At the same time, he graduated with a degree in computer science from Mumbai's Sardar Patel Institute of Technology.
Prior settling into a career as an engineer, he tried his best at cricket and made his domestic debut. However, after giving it his all for two years, he left the game and moved to the West to work as a software programmer.