United States of India: USA's giant slayers from various cities of India
NEW DELHI: After a respectable first-class career, some were looking for greener pastures; others were hoping for a second chance at life; and still others were just talented enough to be forced to find an obscure cricket ground on a weekend.
T20 WORLD CUP: SCHEDULE | POINTS TABLE
Meet the stars of the USA's T20 World Cup debut, which shocked the cricket world by defeating Pakistan, the finalists of the previous edition, in Dallas:
Monank Patel: The team's captain, who was born in Ahmedabad, is one of the few individuals who moved to essentially pursue his cricketing career.He was awarded player of the match for his half century. In 2010, he obtained a Green Card, and in 2016, he moved permanently to New Jersey.
A powerful right-hander, when he's not playing for his country, he also teaches cricket to kids living abroad three times a week and runs coaching clinics. Turf wickets were scarce in the USA at first, and Monank has participated in numerous 20- and 30-over weekend club events throughout the nation in addition to playing a lot of matting cricket.
Saurabh Netravalkar: Netravalkar is the epitome of a happy union between academia and athletics. He rose to prominence following a brilliant Super Over, and before that he squared up Mohammed Rizwan with an away swinger and tricked Iftikhar Ahmed with a low sinking slow full-toss.
During the 2010 World Cup in New Zealand, he faced some of the best U-19 English cricket players, including Joe Root, Jos Buttler, and Ben Stokes. Known as "Netra" at the time, he combined well with fellow left-arm seamer Jaydev Unadkat and Sandeep Sharma of Punjab.
But just like in Mumbai, one must be the best in order to live; being good is insufficient. The academically gifted young man, who already had an engineering degree in computer science, was awarded a scholarship to study for an MS at Cornell University.
But sport never left him. To establish himself, he competed at all levels of US cricket and put on a respectable performance in Major League sport's inaugural season, which featured several of the best T20 players in the world.
He works as a senior technologist at Oracle's Silicon Valley division, away from cricket.
Harmeet Singh: As
