T20 World Cup | Shubham Ranjane’s USA on Pakistan in T20 World Cup 2024 vs 2026
A few years later, at Tendulkar’s home ground, the Wankhede Stadium, when Sanjay hit a pair of monstrous sixes off Hardik Pandya and Axar Patel, with the entire stadium applauding the 22-year-old and praising R Ashwin on social media, it made his father, who was watching from the stands, emotional.“We couldn’t even believe what we saw,” he told TimesofIndia.com. “It was way beyond what we dreamed he would do.Satya grew up like most Indian kids of his generation: playing a little cricket and watching a lot. But never seriously enough to envision a career. While Sanjay showed promise early on, it wasn’t mapped out with grand plans. It was encouragement, support and letting the child enjoy the game. India’s World Cup victory in 2011 planted a seed in the youngster and Satya and his wife Julie, an American citizen, moved to Bengaluru so that their son could fulfill his dream.At Ebenezer International School in Bengaluru, Sanjay found a coach in Syed Zabiulla, who also coached American cricketer Rushil Ugarkar and Karnataka’s current machine R Samaran.As a schoolboy, and even when he played for Karnataka under-16, Sanjay was not known as a six-hitter. His role was as an anchor, someone who stayed at one end, piled up runs and gave the team stability.
American cricketer Sanjay Krishnamurthi is pursuing a computer science degree in the San Francisco Bay Area. (Photo by special agreement)
“He doesn’t talk much,” Zabiulla said of his charge. “He likes to live in the present.Sanjay’s cricketing journey took an unexpected turn in March 2020 when the family moved from Bengaluru to the San Francisco Bay Area, right in the middle of the pandemic. The shift was monumental. India, where cricket breathes in every stripe, gave way to a country where the sport was just finding its feet.“In India, everything takes effort,” explains Satya. “Traffic, travel, competition. Some things are easier in the US. The infrastructure in terms of movement is better, but in terms of cricket, the facilities are less.”Yet cricket was quietly growing. In the Bay Area, Satya began to notice parents dropping off their children at academies in the evenings and on weekends. Matches were held. The ecosystem was small but expanding. All Sanjay had to do was play, adapt and learn.What helped was Sanjay’s temperament. According to his childhood coach in Bengaluru, he was never very loud. Then came the move to the USA and with it the harsh reality of cricket. There was no red-ball cricket. No multi-day games. White ball cricket ruled it all.
File photo of Sanjay Krishnamurthi (top right). (Photo by special agreement)
“Sanjay understood something very early on,” Zabiulla recalls. “If you want to play here, you have to change.”The quality of cricket in India, Sanjay later told his coach, was higher. But in the US, the one-size-fits-all focus made planning easier. This also required reinvention. Power was missing. Pushing boundaries was essential. So Sanjay worked on it.The transformation didn’t happen overnight, but it was intentional. The anchor has learned to quit. A boy who struggled to loosen the ropes became someone who could change the game with a few swings.Through it all, academics never disappeared from the picture. Sanjay is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in computer science and is in his final year. Balancing course work with international travel is not easy. He still has four courses left to complete his degree.“He’s very good in his studies. He’s just doing his bachelor’s in computer science and he’s in his final year. That’s something you can do in the US, which is very difficult in India. But it’s hard to do both. He has four courses left to finish his degree,” says Satya.“Some of the professors are very supportive when he travels and there are also online options so he can manage. Now that he is playing in the World Cup, people are praising him.”Play in the big leaguesSatya believes this balance would be much more difficult in India. In the US, there is flexibility, although the requirements are large. When Sanjay started playing in T20 leagues, first in the US and then abroad, attention followed.He has featured in Major League Cricket (MLC) for the last two years. He also played in Nepal Premier League and ILT20 this year. The locker rooms have changed. Standards have risen. He trained and raced alongside the best in the world.However, one thing was missing. He did not play against India’s best.When the moment finally arrived at the Wankhede Stadium, emotions ran high. It was another challenge for Sanjay. It was overwhelming for his parents.“Right after the match, so many people messaged me,” says Satya. “Hundreds of messages for me, my wife and him. Took a long time to reply.”Celebrity was never part of the plan. It came quietly, then suddenly. Satya admits that even after years of understanding sports culture, he didn’t expect it to be this big.Sanjay showed early promise
Sanjay Krishnamurthi played for the Karnataka U-16 team before moving to the USA in 2020. (Photo by special arrangement)
Zabiulla, who was watching from a distance, was not surprised by the calm Sanjay displayed. He’s seen it before, when his teams were down.He recalls a two-day school game against one of the strongest teams in town, DPS South. The opposition had ten players at state level. Zabiulla’s team had one.“As a coach, I was tense,” he says. “It was a small ground. They could have scored 300 or 400.”Instead, careful planning and discipline turned the game around. The opposition were bowled out for 140. Sanjay played his part with the ball, delivering some tight left-arm spin before making a solid start with the bat.When the top order collapsed and the team slumped to 80 for 5, it was energy, belief and a collective effort that carried them through. He wagged his tail. They qualified for the final. That night there was a party at Sanjay’s house. Not because they discovered a future international star, but because a group of underdogs trusted the plan and each other.This mindset stayed with Sanjay as he grew up. He analyzed everything around him. He listened more than he spoke. He learned when to adapt and when to stay true to himself.Sanjay “looked up to” AB de Villiers
Sanjay Krishnamurthi of USA plays a shot during the T20 World Cup cricket match between India and USA at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. (PTI)
Even the idols were chosen with care. Sanjay grew up admiring AB de Villiers, not because he wanted to emulate him, but because he appreciated the genius.“The cricketer he really looks up to is AB de Villiers. He has always admired him. He said in a recent interview that he doesn’t think his game is like AB de Villiers because AB is an inimitable genius. But he has always looked up to him,” says Satya, who has his own preferences. When asked to choose between Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid, he laughed before choosing Dravid. Again, not because of numbers, but personality.Maybe that also explains something about Sanjay.For Satya, it’s always about the next game, not the past applause. For Zabiulla, it is about a boy who understood the demands of his environment and changed accordingly.And for Sanjay, it’s still about living in the present, one ball at a time, which carries the image of MS Dhoni hitting the winning six for India, a hit that not only cheered a billion Indians but also gave hope to a young lad.