Give me your weary, poor, your people yearning to breathe free, the miserable ones of your crowded shore. Send these homeless, storm-tossed people to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
These lines from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem The New Colossus are engraved in bronze at the base of the Statue of Liberty and stand as a promise of freedom. American Dream This message is key for any immigrant coming to the US.
One such story revolves around Santiago Munez, the fictional protagonist of Goal: The Dream Begins (2005), an illegal immigrant from Los Angeles who moves to the Premier League and becomes a big-game ball player with Newcastle United. The story of an illegal American immigrant from Los Angeles crossing the ocean to become a big-game ball player was a little different from the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, but 19 years later, Saurabh Netravalkar, who is not actually an illegal immigrant, is living the same dream, but with whipped cream on top.
Netravalkar is living both the American dream (becoming a professionally successful expatriate in the Shining City on the Hilltop) and the Indian dream (beating Pakistan in a crucial match) at the same time. Now he will face the country he represented as a youngster, and team members he has shared a dressing room with.
Netravalkar’s story is quite amazing.
As a profile in the Times put it: “America’s newest — and perhaps most unexpected — sports hero has had to strike a fine balance to maintain his popularity.” Cricket Dreams are alive Software engineer Saurabh Netravalkar has been spotted hunched over his work laptop during lunch breaks, either coding or meeting with colleagues via video calls, during club matches. After all, all those hours are spent juggling the demands of a full-time job with tech giant Oracle At the same time, playing professional sports has ultimately proven to be beneficial.”
When he is not bowling in Pakistan, working like an engineer without a valid JIRA ticket, Netravalkar’s day job is as a Principal Engineer at Oracle. And, as if being an international level cricketer and a great coder was not enough to brag about, Netravalkar is also a talented ukulele player and is married to Devi Snigdha Upalla, who is also a Principal Oracle Engineer and a talented Kathak dancer whose Bolly X fitness program is quite popular. It appears that talent and luck are not democratically allocated when it is assigned by some higher being or evolution.
Netravalkar’s rapid rise as an artist Indian-Americans The immigrants have come at a time when people of Indian origin can be found on both sides of politics and in the upper echelons of American society, except in sports. It is fair to say that of all immigrant groups – coming to American shores for a better life – none have left their mark in America like Indian-Americans. They are the highest-earning minority group. In politics, the so-called Samosa Caucus – a term to describe a modest number of Indian-Americans in Congress – has exploded on both sides of politics. On the Republican side, you have the Congressional Speakers. Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, while Native The Democrats setup includes Vice President Kamala Harris and several others serving in the House of Representatives. Sundar Pichai And Satya Nadella is one of the 21 billion dollar companies headed by Indian Americans. Nobel Prize winners too include names like Amartya Sen, Abhijit Banerjee and Venki Ramakrishnan, but it seems none of them ticked as many boxes as Netravalkar did.
As one Instagram user wrote: “Brother sings normally, works as a full-time engineer, and owns a Pakistani dish as a hobby.”
So, how did Saurabh Netravalkar become the poster child of the Indian and American dream? It all started in the world’s biggest cricketing city, Mumbai.
It is home to many cricket legends, including Sachin TendulkarApart from legends like Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and current Indian captain Rohit Sharma, many youngsters have grown up in this city with the hope of playing for India.
Mumbai have won the most Ranji Trophy titles with 42 victories in 88 seasons. The wide gap in class is evident from the fact that the No. 2 spot is held by Karnataka who have won the domestic tournament 8 times. But Mumbai’s success can also be a hindrance and it is perhaps the toughest team for any player to break into. Even Sachin Tendulkar’s son Arjun – a brilliant fast bowler – had to move to Goa to get regular game time.
But Netravalkar was not deterred and shot to fame in 2009 when he shook the stumps of Yuvraj Singh at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru. Yuvraj had by then become part of Indian cricket folklore after he made a brilliant debut for India in the 2000 ICC Knock Out Trophy when he scored an unbeaten 84 off 80 balls against Australian pacers like Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie.
Luck favoured Netravalkar when he was called up for the BCCI Corporate Trophy, where he shared the dressing room with the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa and Suresh Raina, while the opposing camp had the likes of Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni. He also performed brilliantly in the 2010 Under-19 Cricket World Cup, where he was the highest wicket-taker for India. However, making it into the senior setup proved more difficult. At the time, the Mumbai team had fast bowlers like Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan and others.
To give a boost to his cricket career, he skipped an entire semester to focus on the sport. Netravalkar made his Ranji debut in 2013, but being in and out of the team meant he bid adieu to the sport he loved and took the more practical route of returning to his studies.
Fate appeared to have closed the doors to cricket forever when in 2015, Cornell University in New York offered him a scholarship, impressed by his player analysis app CricDecode (if you search, you can still find the code of the app on developer platform GitHub).
After graduating from Cornell he was offered a job by Oracle in San Francisco and left his cricket kit at home, playing for fun on weekends.
Fate intervened when the ICC changed its rules – from four years to three years – for residents to represent their adopted countries. An H1B card holder, Netravalkar made it to the US team in 2018 and also captained the side for three years.
Like all crazy cricket fans in India, Netravalkar and his father Naresh watched many matches together in the 1990s and 2000s. Their favourite bowlers were Wasim Akram, Chaminda Vaas and Zaheer Khan. Perhaps those fantasies would have remained a dream had the US not co-hosted the T20 Cricket World Cup, as Netravalkar showed he had the ability to take on the big boys. Incidentally, in 2010, in the Under-19 Cricket World Cup, Netravalkar was heartbroken when Team India lost to a Pakistan team that featured a young Babar Azam.
On June 12, Netravalkar will be facing players he has known for a long time, whose exploits he may have seen in the news or on social media.
Virat Kohli was in the opposing camp in the BCCI Corporate Championship, while current captain Rohit Sharma was the senior player in the Mumbai team. Meanwhile, Surya Kumar Yadav, a batsman who has redefined T20 cricket with his avant-garde batting style, was a contemporary in the Mumbai dressing room.
Opposition coach Rahul Dravid, who saw him bowl in the Super Over against Pakistan, is the same man he bowled to at the National Cricket Academy many years ago.
In fact, Netravalkar’s rapid rise in the first T20 tournament held in the land that Columbus discovered, and that Columbus actually discovered, has an epochal hue to it, as the USA is facing off against the land that Columbus hoped to discover. That a young man from Mumbai will be at the centre of the story in American colours makes it an even bigger story.
In the old video game Cricket ’97, the wise Richie Benaud had a line: “When you can hear the sound of leather hitting willow, you know there’s nothing wrong with the world.” For a long time, the United States was a country where the sound of leather hitting willow was missing (except in baseball) but that’s all going to change after this World Cup. It seems that Americans, not just expatriates, have fully embraced this game and at the center of it all is an Oracle engineer who is living the American and Indian dream simultaneously. There are engineers who play cricket and cricketers who are engineers, but rarely is there someone who is so adept at both.
In fact, there is a video on his Instagram in which Netravalkar, while watching an India vs Pakistan match, says something in pure Marathi that will leave even a south Mumbaikar speechless: “Do come to the ground on June 12 to support us.” Many fans – regardless of their nationality or whether they care about the Tebbit Test – would be forgiven if they decided for a brief moment to support the young Mumbai boy who plays in American colours and has dared to dream, bowling against the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
These lines from Emma Lazarus’ 1883 poem The New Colossus are engraved in bronze at the base of the Statue of Liberty and stand as a promise of freedom. American Dream This message is key for any immigrant coming to the US.
One such story revolves around Santiago Munez, the fictional protagonist of Goal: The Dream Begins (2005), an illegal immigrant from Los Angeles who moves to the Premier League and becomes a big-game ball player with Newcastle United. The story of an illegal American immigrant from Los Angeles crossing the ocean to become a big-game ball player was a little different from the words engraved on the Statue of Liberty, but 19 years later, Saurabh Netravalkar, who is not actually an illegal immigrant, is living the same dream, but with whipped cream on top.
Netravalkar is living both the American dream (becoming a professionally successful expatriate in the Shining City on the Hilltop) and the Indian dream (beating Pakistan in a crucial match) at the same time. Now he will face the country he represented as a youngster, and team members he has shared a dressing room with.
Netravalkar’s story is quite amazing.
As a profile in the Times put it: “America’s newest — and perhaps most unexpected — sports hero has had to strike a fine balance to maintain his popularity.” Cricket Dreams are alive Software engineer Saurabh Netravalkar has been spotted hunched over his work laptop during lunch breaks, either coding or meeting with colleagues via video calls, during club matches. After all, all those hours are spent juggling the demands of a full-time job with tech giant Oracle At the same time, playing professional sports has ultimately proven to be beneficial.”
When he is not bowling in Pakistan, working like an engineer without a valid JIRA ticket, Netravalkar’s day job is as a Principal Engineer at Oracle. And, as if being an international level cricketer and a great coder was not enough to brag about, Netravalkar is also a talented ukulele player and is married to Devi Snigdha Upalla, who is also a Principal Oracle Engineer and a talented Kathak dancer whose Bolly X fitness program is quite popular. It appears that talent and luck are not democratically allocated when it is assigned by some higher being or evolution.
Netravalkar’s rapid rise as an artist Indian-Americans The immigrants have come at a time when people of Indian origin can be found on both sides of politics and in the upper echelons of American society, except in sports. It is fair to say that of all immigrant groups – coming to American shores for a better life – none have left their mark in America like Indian-Americans. They are the highest-earning minority group. In politics, the so-called Samosa Caucus – a term to describe a modest number of Indian-Americans in Congress – has exploded on both sides of politics. On the Republican side, you have the Congressional Speakers. Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley, while Native The Democrats setup includes Vice President Kamala Harris and several others serving in the House of Representatives. Sundar Pichai And Satya Nadella is one of the 21 billion dollar companies headed by Indian Americans. Nobel Prize winners too include names like Amartya Sen, Abhijit Banerjee and Venki Ramakrishnan, but it seems none of them ticked as many boxes as Netravalkar did.
As one Instagram user wrote: “Brother sings normally, works as a full-time engineer, and owns a Pakistani dish as a hobby.”
So, how did Saurabh Netravalkar become the poster child of the Indian and American dream? It all started in the world’s biggest cricketing city, Mumbai.
It is home to many cricket legends, including Sachin TendulkarApart from legends like Sunil Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and current Indian captain Rohit Sharma, many youngsters have grown up in this city with the hope of playing for India.
Mumbai have won the most Ranji Trophy titles with 42 victories in 88 seasons. The wide gap in class is evident from the fact that the No. 2 spot is held by Karnataka who have won the domestic tournament 8 times. But Mumbai’s success can also be a hindrance and it is perhaps the toughest team for any player to break into. Even Sachin Tendulkar’s son Arjun – a brilliant fast bowler – had to move to Goa to get regular game time.
But Netravalkar was not deterred and shot to fame in 2009 when he shook the stumps of Yuvraj Singh at the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru. Yuvraj had by then become part of Indian cricket folklore after he made a brilliant debut for India in the 2000 ICC Knock Out Trophy when he scored an unbeaten 84 off 80 balls against Australian pacers like Brett Lee, Glenn McGrath and Jason Gillespie.
Luck favoured Netravalkar when he was called up for the BCCI Corporate Trophy, where he shared the dressing room with the likes of Yuvraj Singh, Robin Uthappa and Suresh Raina, while the opposing camp had the likes of Virat Kohli and MS Dhoni. He also performed brilliantly in the 2010 Under-19 Cricket World Cup, where he was the highest wicket-taker for India. However, making it into the senior setup proved more difficult. At the time, the Mumbai team had fast bowlers like Ajit Agarkar, Zaheer Khan and others.
To give a boost to his cricket career, he skipped an entire semester to focus on the sport. Netravalkar made his Ranji debut in 2013, but being in and out of the team meant he bid adieu to the sport he loved and took the more practical route of returning to his studies.
Fate appeared to have closed the doors to cricket forever when in 2015, Cornell University in New York offered him a scholarship, impressed by his player analysis app CricDecode (if you search, you can still find the code of the app on developer platform GitHub).
After graduating from Cornell he was offered a job by Oracle in San Francisco and left his cricket kit at home, playing for fun on weekends.
Fate intervened when the ICC changed its rules – from four years to three years – for residents to represent their adopted countries. An H1B card holder, Netravalkar made it to the US team in 2018 and also captained the side for three years.
Like all crazy cricket fans in India, Netravalkar and his father Naresh watched many matches together in the 1990s and 2000s. Their favourite bowlers were Wasim Akram, Chaminda Vaas and Zaheer Khan. Perhaps those fantasies would have remained a dream had the US not co-hosted the T20 Cricket World Cup, as Netravalkar showed he had the ability to take on the big boys. Incidentally, in 2010, in the Under-19 Cricket World Cup, Netravalkar was heartbroken when Team India lost to a Pakistan team that featured a young Babar Azam.
On June 12, Netravalkar will be facing players he has known for a long time, whose exploits he may have seen in the news or on social media.
Virat Kohli was in the opposing camp in the BCCI Corporate Championship, while current captain Rohit Sharma was the senior player in the Mumbai team. Meanwhile, Surya Kumar Yadav, a batsman who has redefined T20 cricket with his avant-garde batting style, was a contemporary in the Mumbai dressing room.
Opposition coach Rahul Dravid, who saw him bowl in the Super Over against Pakistan, is the same man he bowled to at the National Cricket Academy many years ago.
In fact, Netravalkar’s rapid rise in the first T20 tournament held in the land that Columbus discovered, and that Columbus actually discovered, has an epochal hue to it, as the USA is facing off against the land that Columbus hoped to discover. That a young man from Mumbai will be at the centre of the story in American colours makes it an even bigger story.
In the old video game Cricket ’97, the wise Richie Benaud had a line: “When you can hear the sound of leather hitting willow, you know there’s nothing wrong with the world.” For a long time, the United States was a country where the sound of leather hitting willow was missing (except in baseball) but that’s all going to change after this World Cup. It seems that Americans, not just expatriates, have fully embraced this game and at the center of it all is an Oracle engineer who is living the American and Indian dream simultaneously. There are engineers who play cricket and cricketers who are engineers, but rarely is there someone who is so adept at both.
In fact, there is a video on his Instagram in which Netravalkar, while watching an India vs Pakistan match, says something in pure Marathi that will leave even a south Mumbaikar speechless: “Do come to the ground on June 12 to support us.” Many fans – regardless of their nationality or whether they care about the Tebbit Test – would be forgiven if they decided for a brief moment to support the young Mumbai boy who plays in American colours and has dared to dream, bowling against the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma.
