TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I'm DOING

Here’s the thing…we gratefully live in a world where games and pastimes serve as passions and diversions for our mind, spirit, and body. Athletics and competition, not just for individuals, but for communities and nations, can be emblematic of so much sentiment with the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat, and the stories in between helping to fuel confident pride and hopeful aspirations.
And speaking of confident aspirations, thank you all once again for listening and watching TRUST ME I KNOW WHAT I’m DOING and for sharing this with your friends and family. Your support reminds everyone that conversation is the antidote to apathy, and if you’re enjoying these , please share a kind rating and review and follow along on social media and subscribe as I’m really quite grateful.
Now, if you were looking for a single sport that has a modern stronghold relationship on identity and soul of a region, and particularly for India and its global diaspora,there’s only one king and it’s cricket! But the stories of cricket athletes and their perseverance, skill building, and performance on the pitch or field are not always linear or even bound by location, so it was simply terrific to catch up with athlete Saurabh Netravalkar about his own cricket story. Saurabh is from Mumbai and excelled in both academics and cricket his whole life. He actually used his computer science knowledge early on to build a cricket app that monitors and tracks performance, and his early skill and athleticism first brought attention as a star bowler of India’s elite under 19 national team. This is where that starburst cricket story took a turn and after a seeming stagnant plateau and with stiff competition from other athletes and bowlers, Saurabh didn’t make the Indian national team or the Mumbai pro team. So like many, Saurabh decided to venture to the US and pursue a Masters degree in Computer Science at Cornell and then life as a software engineer in California. Now seemingly that’s where the cricket story would have ended, but as someone with incredible mental balance, a mature self-awareness, and a passionate and deep sense of purpose, Saurabh kept playing cricket at the club level and local and regional levels here in the US, and eventually found himself on the national team with USA Cricket. This past month, as the world was watching the ICC T20 Men’s World Cup, they were witness to Saurabh’s balance of physical skill and stamina with mental agility and strength. His speed, pace, in-match timing, and clutch performance led Team USA to a dramatic victory over Pakistan and into the Super 8 round and even dismissing Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli in a match against Team India. A pretty stellar showing of cricket strength for someone who equally finds solace in yoga, mindful breathing, mentoring others, and even the ukelele to keep himself grounded. Saurabh’s now playing Major League Cricket for the Washington Freedom and we had a chance to catch up recently to talk about everything from recent lessons learned to growing the game here in the US, but I was curious to first know which was more active in the days since the T20 world cup… the slack channel at work or his whatsapp threads with his teammates?