The teenager also has big dreams, and he wants to realise them “like no one has ever done before”
Alagappan Muthu07-Apr-2024Angkrish Raghuvanshi has big dreams.”To obviously don the India jersey,” he told the IPL website, “but also to wear it like no one has ever done before. Everyone will look at me and say I’m different.”For the record, he has already done that at the Under-19 level in 2022, when India won the World Cup, and he was their highest run-getter. Rahul Dravid, who has spent a portion of his coaching career shepherding the young talent in this country, often makes the point that success in age-group cricket cannot be the end goal; that it might even be detrimental to spend too much time there. You’ve already aced the challenges here. Look for a new one. Otherwise you’ll never grow.Related
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Raghuvanshi is still only 18 years old. So he could have played this year’s Under-19 World Cup too. But he has left that life behind. Over the past six months, he has broken into the toughest team in Indian domestic cricket – Mumbai – and has made a splash in the IPL as well.Batting at No. 3 for Kolkata Knight Riders against Delhi Capitals, he made 54 off just 27 balls. He played that game as an Impact Player, so he spent the rest of the night in the dugout while flashing big toothy grins, which was good because by the time Shah Rukh Khan came over to ruffle his hair and pull him into a bear hug, he had had plenty of practice looking magnificently cute.”It was really special,” Raghuvanshi said. “Earlier, I wasn’t sure if he even knew my name, but now he does. I’ve been watching him on TV from childhood. So to be with him like this feels good.”ESPNcricinfo LtdRaghuvanshi was born in Delhi in 2005 to a family where he would have stuck out like a sore thumb if he hadn’t picked up a sport. His mother Malika used to play basketball. His father Avneet used to play tennis. His uncle Sahil Kukreja used to play cricket, and that’s whom he went to stay with when he was 11 years old.A million things have to go right for anyone to live any dream, let alone one as fanciful as becoming a professional sportsperson. One of those things, for Raghuvanshi, is the desire to be better than he was the day before. That is how he ended up on the radar of people like Dinesh Lad, who has coached Rohit Sharma, and Abhishek Nayar, who has been with him since his Mumbai Under-16 days.”It’s his work ethic; his ability to work hard is his strongest suit,” Nayar said on Sunday. “A lot of people talk about skill as something that’s really important. But what matters for me is the willingness to work hard because that is a sort of talent too, and not everyone possesses it. So yes, skill is something you can develop if you have the talent of working hard and try to achieve the goal.
Looking forward to this wholesome reunion! pic.twitter.com/PHmZvPR500
— KolkataKnightRiders (@KKRiders) December 19, 2023