<p>The cricketers from India’s Under-19 team had a long and exhausting travel from Mumbai to South Africa. It was a difficult journey to the championship game, where they will face Australia on Sunday in a rematch of the senior men’s World Cup championship match. However, their actual adventure took a few years to come to fruition. In order to pursue their aspirations of becoming professional cricket players, many of these young players left behind the conveniences of home and the affection of their family and friends.</p>
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<p>The captain, Uday Saharan, moved from his birthplace in the Sri Ganganagar area of Rajasthan when he was only 12 years old to the 80-kilometer-distance Fazilka district of Punjab in order to have better training facilities. In order for vice-captain Saumy Pandey to be near to his cricket school, his parents relocated from Bharatpur, in the Sidhi region of Madhya Pradesh, to a leased home in Rewa, which is 40 kilometers distant. Arshin Kulkarni traveled the 250 kilometers to Pune from Solapur. Pacer Raj Limbani traveled 550 kilometers to get to Baroda from Dayapar, a hamlet in the Rann of Kutch close to the Pakistani border.</p>
<p>Beneath them all has been a loving family or a sorrowful cricket father, tending to their own dashed hopes for cricket. Sanjeev, Saharan’s father, was referred to be Sri Ganganagar’s Gavaskar. He founded his own academy after failing to make a career out of cricket and passing the BCCI’s Level 1 coaching exam. He had decided that his kid would play cricket even before Saharan was born.</p>
<p>“I arrived at the Udaipur center after passing the Ayurveda test. Arjun Naidu, a legendary figure in Rajasthan and Rajputana, was my coach. He used to tell me until he died, that I would have played the Ranji Trophy if I had gone to Jaipur. It was not meant to be. However, I made sure my kid would escape the same destiny as I did,” he adds.</p>
<p>He had to be a difficult guy sometimes. When he left 12-year-old Uday off to a U14 camp in Mohali, he received a call from his son informing him that he was unable to remain by himself. I kept telling myself I would see him tomorrow for the following several days. I never did. He tells The Sunday Express, “I used to dispute with my wife; this is not the reason I sent him away at such a young age.</p>
<p>In a similar vein, Atul Kulkarni, the father of Kulkarni and a pediatrician at a Solapur hospital, had no hesitation in moving to Pune to allow his son to fulfill the cricket ambition that he was unable to fulfill. “In our family, we are all physicians. Cricket was a past sport for both Arshin’s granddad and myself. As soon as I saw the spark in him, I made the decision to provide him with the greatest resources. By some miracle, I was able to pay for it,” explains South African Atul Kulkarni.</p>
<p>Vasantbhai Patel was tired of seeing his son struggle in the severe weather, even though Limbani’s father wasn’t a huge fan of cricket. The intensity of his son’s gaze compelled him to send Limbani to Baroda, where their family’s previous offspring had gone to pursue their education. “In the summer, I have seen him fighting heat strokes. It’s difficult to play cricket at 50 degrees Celsius. No matter how hard we tried to stop him, he would never listen. I therefore made the decision to transfer him to my older brother Manilal Patel’s posting in Baroda. The farmer Patel adds, “The madness has taken him so far, and as a parent, I had only backed his passion.”</p>
<p>Each cricket player’s family has played a significant role in their success.</p>
<p>In Beed, the famine-ravaged town in Maharashtra, Sanjay Dhas, who named his kid after Sachin Tendulkar, took out a loan to construct six turf wickets so that his son could face 1,000 to 1,500 balls a day. “I was urged to relocate him to Pune by others. “I said no, I’ll give him the best facilities in Beed only,” Dhas, a government employee of Maharashtra’s Health Department, said.</p>
<p>In order to provide his kids with a top-notch education, opening batsman Adarsh Singh’s father, Narendra Kumar Singh, moved the family from Jaunpur to Kanpur. He lost his work in Mumbai during the lockdown, leaving the family with little choice except to return to their hometown. Singh, however, sold a land to enable his son to remain and realize his ambition.</p>
<p>Naushad Khan, the father of Sarfaraz and Musheer, is also well-known for his part. “I asked them both whether they wanted a father figure or a good coach at a very young age,” he recalls. “Maine pehle hi bol diya tha unko acchha baap chahiye ya acchha coach.”</p>
<p>The travels of these young people have brought them to the final in Benoni, South Africa. However, one journey comes to an end and another one starts the challenging world of international cricket competition.</p>
