The man of the moment after a killer Super Over and before that squaring up Mohammed Rizwan with an away swinger and fooling Iftikhar Ahmed with a low dipping slow full-toss, Saurabh Netravalkar is the story of a successful marriage between academics and sports.
In 2010, he bowled against the likes of Joe Root, Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, the golden batch of U-19 English cricketers, who played in that World Cup in New Zealand and 'Netra', as he was known back then, formed a potent pairing with fellow left-arm seamer Jaydev Unadkat and Punjab's Sandeep Sharma.
However just like in Mumbai, being good isn't enough and one needs to be the best to survive. With an engineering degree in Computer Science, the academically brilliant lad got a scholarship to pursue his MS from the prestigious Cornell University.
At that time, Mumbai cricket boasted of fast bowlers like Zaheer Khan, Ajit Agarkar, Dhawal Kulkarni and others, which made it difficult for Netravalkar to make it into the side.
Be that as it may, cricket never left him as he performed at all levels of US cricket to make a name for himself and stood tall with his decent show in Major League Cricket's first edition which was headlined by many top T20 pros in world cricket.
Away from cricket, one can find him at Oracle's office in Silicon Valley where he is a senior techie.
Netravalkar is also an amateur musician and often posts videos of him strumming the ukulele on his official Instagram account. His social media also reveals his affinity for yoga.
Despite being away from his home country, the engineer-cum-cricketer is still a fan of Indian food, and even carries an electric cooker with himself when he is travelling with the US national team, cooking dal and rice to experience "ghar ka khana" when away from home.
Netravalkar is a married man. His wife, Devi Snigdha Muppala is a dancer and often posts videos of her performing her art on social media platforms.
With PTI inputs
Published 07 June 2024, 12:46 IST